What is Authentic Assessment?

Definitions

What Does Authentic Assessment Look Like?

How is Authentic Assessment Similar to/Different from

Traditional Assessment?

 Traditional Assessment
 Authentic Assessment
 Authentic Assessment Complements Traditional Assessment
 Defining Attributes of Authentic and Traditional Assessment
 Teaching to the Test

Alternative Names for Authentic Assessment

Definitions

A form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate
meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills -- Jon Mueller

"...Engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, in which students must use knowledge
to fashion performances effectively and creatively. The tasks are either replicas of or analogous to the
kinds of problems faced by adult citizens and consumers or professionals in the field." -- Grant
Wiggins -- (Wiggins, 1993, p. 229).

"Performance assessments call upon the examinee to demonstrate specific skills and competencies,
that is, to apply the skills and knowledge they have mastered." -- Richard J. Stiggins -- (Stiggins,
1987, p. 34).

What does Authentic Assessment look like?

An authentic assessment usually includes a task for students to perform and a rubric by which their
performance on the task will be evaluated. Click the following links to see many examples of authentic
tasks and rubrics.

 Examples from teachers in my Authentic Assessment course

How is Authentic Assessment similar to/different from Traditional

Assessment?

The following comparison is somewhat simplistic, but I hope it illuminates the different assumptions of
the two approaches to assessment.
Traditional Assessment

By "traditional assessment" (TA) I am referring to the forced-choice measures of multiple-choice tests,

fill-in-the-blanks, true-false, matching and the like that have been and remain so common in
education. Students typically select an answer or recall information to complete the assessment.
These tests may be standardized or teacher-created. They may be administered locally or statewide,
or internationally.

Behind traditional and authentic assessments is a belief that the primary mission of schools is to help
develop productive citizens. That is the essence of most mission statements I have read. From this
common beginning, the two perspectives on assessment diverge. Essentially, TA is grounded in
educational philosophy that adopts the following reasoning and practice:

1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens.

2. To be a productive citizen an individual must possess a certain body of knowledge and skills.
3. Therefore, schools must teach this body of knowledge and skills.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then test students to see if they acquired the
knowledge and skills.

In the TA model, the curriculum drives assessment. "The" body of knowledge is determined
first. That knowledge becomes the curriculum that is delivered. Subsequently, the assessments are
developed and administered to determine if acquisition of the curriculum occurred.

Authentic Assessment

In contrast, authentic assessment (AA) springs from the following reasoning and practice:

1. A school's mission is to develop productive citizens.

2. To be a productive citizen, an individual must be capable of performing meaningful tasks in the real
world.
3. Therefore, schools must help students become proficient at performing the tasks they will
encounter when they graduate.
4. To determine if it is successful, the school must then ask students to perform meaningful tasks that
replicate real world challenges to see if students are capable of doing so.

Thus, in AA, assessment drives the curriculum. That is, teachers first determine the tasks that
students will perform to demonstrate their mastery, and then a curriculum is developed that will
enable students to perform those tasks well, which would include the acquisition of essential
knowledge and skills. This has been referred to as planning backwards (e.g., McDonald, 1992).

If I were a golf instructor and I taught the skills required to perform well, I would not assess my
students' performance by giving them a multiple choice test. I would put them out on the golf course
and ask them to perform. Although this is obvious with athletic skills, it is also true for academic
subjects. We can teach students how to do math, do history and do science, not
just know them. Then, to assess what our students had learned, we can ask students to perform
tasks that "replicate the challenges" faced by those using mathematics, doing history or conducting
scientific investigation.

Authentic Assessment Complements Traditional Assessment

But a teacher does not have to choose between AA and TA. It is likely that some mix of the two will
best meet your needs. To use a silly example, if I had to choose a chauffeur from between someone
who passed the driving portion of the driver's license test but failed the written portion or someone
who failed the driving portion and passed the written portion, I would choose the driver who most
directly demonstrated the ability to drive, that is, the one who passed the driving portion of the test.
However, I would prefer a driver who passed both portions. I would feel more comfortable knowing
that my chauffeur had a good knowledge base about driving (which might best be assessed in a
traditional manner) and was able to apply that knowledge in a real context (which could be
demonstrated through an authentic assessment).

Defining Attributes of Traditional and Authentic Assessment

Another way that AA is commonly distinguished from TA is in terms of its defining attributes. Of
course, TA's as well as AA's vary considerably in the forms they take. But, typically, along the
continuums of attributes listed below, TA's fall more towards the left end of each continuum and AA's
fall more towards the right end.

Traditional --------------------------------------------- Authentic

Selecting a Response ------------------------------------ Performing a Task

Contrived --------------------------------------------------------------- Real-life

Recall/Recognition ------------------------------- Construction/Application

Teacher-structured ------------------------------------- Student-structured

Indirect Evidence -------------------------------------------- Direct Evidence

Let me clarify the attributes by elaborating on each in the context of traditional and authentic
assessments:

Selecting a Response to Performing a Task: On traditional assessments, students are typically

given several choices (e.g., a,b,c or d; true or false; which of these match with those) and asked to
select the right answer. In contrast, authentic assessments ask students to demonstrate
understanding by performing a more complex task usually representative of more meaningful
application.

Contrived to Real-life: It is not very often in life outside of school that we are asked to select from
four alternatives to indicate our proficiency at something. Tests offer these contrived means of
assessment to increase the number of times you can be asked to demonstrate proficiency in a short
period of time. More commonly in life, as in authentic assessments, we are asked to demonstrate
proficiency by doing something.

Recall/Recognition of Knowledge to Construction/Application of Knowledge: Well-designed

traditional assessments (i.e., tests and quizzes) can effectively determine whether or not students
have acquired a body of knowledge. Thus, as mentioned above, tests can serve as a nice complement
to authentic assessments in a teacher's assessment portfolio. Furthermore, we are often asked to
recall or recognize facts and ideas and propositions in life, so tests are somewhat authentic in that
sense. However, the demonstration of recall and recognition on tests is typically much less revealing
about what we really know and can do than when we are asked to construct a product or performance
out of facts, ideas and propositions. Authentic assessments often ask students to analyze, synthesize
and apply what they have learned in a substantial manner, and students create new meaning in the
process as well.

Teacher-structured to Student-structured: When completing a traditional assessment, what a

student can and will demonstrate has been carefully structured by the person(s) who developed the
test. A student's attention will understandably be focused on and limited to what is on the test. In
contrast, authentic assessments allow more student choice and construction in determining what is
presented as evidence of proficiency. Even when students cannot choose their own topics or formats,
there are usually multiple acceptable routes towards constructing a product or performance.
Obviously, assessments more carefully controlled by the teachers offer advantages and
disadvantages. Similarly, more student-structured tasks have strengths and weaknesses that must be
considered when choosing and designing an assessment.

Indirect Evidence to Direct Evidence: Even if a multiple-choice question asks a student to analyze
or apply facts to a new situation rather than just recall the facts, and the student selects the correct
answer, what do you now know about that student? Did that student get lucky and pick the right
answer? What thinking led the student to pick that answer? We really do not know. At best, we can
make some inferences about what that student might know and might be able to do with that
knowledge. The evidence is very indirect, particularly for claims of meaningful application in complex,
real-world situations. Authentic assessments, on the other hand, offer more direct evidence of
application and construction of knowledge. As in the golf example above, putting a golf student on the
golf course to play provides much more direct evidence of proficiency than giving the student a written
test. Can a student effectively critique the arguments someone else has presented (an important skill
often required in the real world)? Asking a student to write a critique should provide more direct
evidence of that skill than asking the student a series of multiple-choice, analytical questions about a
passage, although both assessments may be useful.

Teaching to the Test

These two different approaches to assessment also offer different advice about teaching to the
test. Under the TA model, teachers have been discouraged from teaching to the test. That is because
a test usually assesses a sample of students' knowledge and understanding and assumes that
students' performance on the sample is representative of their knowledge of all the relevant
material. If teachers focus primarily on the sample to be tested during instruction, then good
performance on that sample does not necessarily reflect knowledge of all the material. So, teachers
hide the test so that the sample is not known beforehand, and teachers are admonished not to teach
to the test.

With AA, teachers are encouraged to teach to the test. Students need to learn how to perform well on
meaningful tasks. To aid students in that process, it is helpful to show them models of good (and not
so good) performance. Furthermore, the student benefits from seeing the task rubric ahead of time
as well. Is this "cheating"? Will students then just be able to mimic the work of others without truly
understanding what they are doing? Authentic assessments typically do not lend themselves to
mimicry. There is not one correct answer to copy. So, by knowing what good performance looks like,
and by knowing what specific characteristics make up good performance, students can better develop
the skills and understanding necessary to perform well on these tasks. (For further discussion of
teaching to the test, see Bushweller.)

Alternative Names for Authentic Assessment

You can also learn something about what AA is by looking at the other common names for this form of
assessment. For example, AA is sometimes referred to as

 Performance Assessment (or Performance-based) -- so-called because students are asked

to perform meaningful tasks. This is the other most common term for this type of assessment.
Some educators distinguish performance assessment from AA by defining performance
assessment as performance-based as Stiggins has above but with no reference to
the authentic nature of the task (e.g., Meyer, 1992). For these educators, authentic
assessments are performance assessments using real-world or authentic tasks or contexts.
 Since we should not typically ask students to perform work that is not authentic in nature, I
choose to treat these two terms synonymously.
 Alternative Assessment -- so-called because AA is an alternative to traditional assessments.
 Direct Assessment -- so-called because AA provides more direct evidence of meaningful
application of knowledge and skills. If a student does well on a multiple-choice test we might
infer indirectly that the student could apply that knowledge in real-world contexts, but we
would be more comfortable making that inference from a direct demonstration of that
application such as in the golfing example above.

Why Use Authentic Assessment?

The question "Why use authentic assessment?" is not meant to suggest that you have to choose
between traditional assessments such as tests and more authentic or performance assessments.
Often, teachers use a mix of traditional and authentic assessments to serve different purposes. This
section, then, attempts to explain why teachers might choose authentic assessments for certain types
of judgments and why authentic assessments have become more popular in recent years.

Authentic Assessments are Direct Measures

We do not just want students to know the content of the disciplines when they graduate. We, of
course, want them to be able to use the acquired knowledge and skills in the real world. So, our
assessments have to also tell us if students can apply what they have learned in authentic situations.
If a student does well on a test of knowledge we might infer that the student could also apply that
knowledge. But that is rather indirect evidence. I could more directly check for the ability to apply by
asking the student to use what they have learned in some meaningful way. To return to an example I
have used elsewhere, if I taught someone to play golf I would not check what they have learned with
just a written test. I would want to see more direct, authentic evidence. I would put my student out
on a golf course to play. Similarly, if we want to know if our students can interpret literature, calculate
potential savings on sale items, test a hypothesis, develop a fitness plan, converse in a foreign
language, or apply other knowledge and skills they have learned, then authentic assessments will
provide the most direct evidence.

Can you think of professions which require some direct demonstration of relevant skills before
someone can be employed in that field? Doctors, electricians, teachers, actors and others must all
provide direct evidence of competence to be hired. Completing a written or oral test or interview is
usually not sufficient. Shouldn't we ask the same of our students before we say they are ready to
graduate? Or pass a course? Or move on to the next grade?

Authentic Assessments Capture Constructive Nature of Learning

A considerable body of research on learning has found that we cannot simply be fed knowledge. We
need to construct our own meaning of the world, using information we have gathered and were taught
and our own experiences with the world (e.g., Bransford & Vye, 1989; Forman & Kuschner,
1977; Neisser, 1967; Steffe & Gale, 1995; Wittrock, 1991). Thus, assessments cannot just ask
students to repeat back information they have received. Students must also be asked to demonstrate
that they have accurately constructed meaning about what they have been taught. Furthermore,
students must be given the opportunity to engage in the construction of meaning. Authentic tasks not
only serve as assessments but also as vehicles for such learning.

Authentic Assessments Integrate Teaching, Learning and Assessment

Authentic assessment, in contrast to more traditional assessment, encourages the integration of
teaching, learning and assessing. In the "traditional assessment" model, teaching and learning are
often separated from assessment, i.e., a test is administered after knowledge or skills have
(hopefully) been acquired. In the authentic assessment model, the same authentic task used to
measure the students' ability to apply the knowledge or skills is used as a vehicle for student
learning. For example, when presented with a real-world problem to solve, students are learning in
the process of developing a solution, teachers are facilitating the process, and the students' solutions
to the problem becomes an assessment of how well the students can meaningfully apply the concepts.

Authentic Assessments Provide Multiple Paths to Demonstration

We all have different strengths and weaknesses in how we learn. Similarly, we are different in how we
can best demonstrate what we have learned. Regarding the traditional assessment model, answering
multiple-choice questions does not allow for much variability in how students demonstrate the
knowledge and skills they have acquired. On the one hand, that is a strength of tests because it
makes sure everyone is being compared on the same domains in the same manner which increases
the consistency and comparability of the measure. On the other hand, testing favors those who are
better test-takers and does not give students any choice in how they believe they can best
demonstrate what they have learned.

Thus, it is recommended (e.g., Wiggins, 1998) that multiple and varied assessments be used so that
1) a sufficient number of samples are obtained (multiple), and 2) a sufficient variety of measures are
used (varied). Variety of measurement can be accomplished by assessing the students through
different measures that allows you to see them apply what they have learned in different ways and
from different perspectives. Typically, you will be more confident in the students' grasp of the material
if they can do so. But some variety of assessment can also be accomplished within a single measure.
Authentic tasks tend to give the students more freedom in how they will demonstrate what they have
learned. By carefully identifying the criteria of good performance on the authentic task ahead of time,
the teacher can still make comparable judgments of student performance even though student
performance might be expressed quite differently from student to student. For example, the products
students create to demonstrate authentic learning on the same task might take different forms (e.g.,
posters, oral presentations, videos, websites). Or, even though students might be required to produce
the same authentic product, there can be room within the product for different modes of expression.
For example, writing a good persuasive essay requires a common set of skills from students, but there
is still room for variation in how that essay is constructed.