Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English
Authentic Assessment
Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Standards________________________________________
Before I can effectively teach or assess students, I need to determine what they should know and be able to do. In other words, I need a good set of standards. Or do I need goals? Orobjectives? Standards, goals and objectives are all descriptions of what students should know and be able to do. So, how are they different? I distinguish standards from other statements of student performance primarily along two dimensions: 1) breadth of coverage and 2) feasibility of measurement and observation. see attached file......
Breadth of Coverage
Starting at the top of the above diagram, the mission statement of schools or districts or states is typically the broadest statement of what students are intended to know and be able to do when they graduate. In roughly 50 words or less, mission statements attempt to communicate to all constituencies the purposes of education in that institution. An example of a mission statement might be:
"All students at Mueller School will become effective communicators, collaborators and problem-solvers."
Unfortunately, mission statements just make good wall-hangings in many schools or districts. That is a missed opportunity. A clearly written, purposeful statement can serve as an excellent starting point for curriculum development, instruction and assessment. Furthermore, a good mission statement can provide a useful guide against which progress can be compared to determine if it is following a consistent, productive path.
For example, if Mueller School adopted the above statement, it would design all curriculum in a manner to promote effective communication, collaboration and problem-solving. Disciplinary content would not be forgotten. Rather, a clear focus would develop around teaching students to communicate about mathematics, collaborate in the construction of new knowledge and solve problems specific to science, social studies, the fine arts, etc. As a teacher at that school I would always ask myself if the lesson I had planned or the curricular framework we developed would promote such knowledge and skills. Thus, a good mission statement would serve as a focal point to initiate development as well as a check for progress.
As stated above, mission statements are very brief, broad statements. To flesh them out further schools often identify a set of goals which more specifically, yet still broadly, define expectations for students. The goals also communicate the school's or district's focus for its educational plan.
Goals are typically subdivided further to identify standards. Whereas goals are often written broadly enough to cross grade levels and content areas, standards, particularly those that are content-based, tend to be specific to one or a few grade levels and one content area, and may be written at the level of a unit in curricular planning. However, many state and national K-12 standards are written with the graduating senior in mind. To provide guidance for prior grades,benchmark standards are written which describe what progress third or fifth or eighth graders should have made toward a particular standard.
Moving down the pyramid above, the statements of what students should know and be able to do become more narrow and, consequently, more numerous within a curriculum. The most specific and numerous is the objective. Objectives are typically written at the level of the lesson plan, with one or more objectives for each lesson.
Feasibility of Measurement
The four types of statements presented in the pyramid can also be differentiated by whether or not they are amenable to assessment. Goals and mission statements are typically written to share a broad vision, not to serve as benchmarks to be measured. Thus, their language does not usually make them amenable to assessment. On the other hand, standards and objectives are written with measurement in mind. Consequently, those statements need to describe student behavior that is observable.
So, why is there a section of this authentic assessment web site devoted to standards and not one on mission statements, goals or objectives? Although the term standard has been around the field of education for a long time, it has become more prominent in recent years as the authentic assessment movement has taken off. I believe it has become more prominent than the other statements of behavior in the movement for two reasons. First, like objectives, standards are amenable to assessment, a necessary requirement to guide task design. Second, the broader nature of standard versus objective is consistent with authentic assessment's emphasis on complex, integrative authentic tasks that typically span more than one class period, more than one topic and sometimes even more than one discipline.
Thus, good authentic assessment development begins with identifying a set of standards for your students. State and national efforts at standards-writing have typically focused on the content of the disciplines. But what about critical thinking skills, problem solving abilities, collaborative skills and personal development? These highly valued skills are not easily incorporated into content standards and, thus, are often omitted or given insufficient attention. Yet, the standards should capture what we most value and most want our students to learn. So, we should consider including these other skills in our standards. To do so, it may be helpful to distinguish content standards from other types. To see how, look at
Dr. Mueller
Enduring ..........
Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Types of Standards
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I distinguish between three types of standards:
• content standards
• process standards
• value standards
Note: As with many of the authentic assessment terms, there is not a consistent set of labels for the different types of standards. These are labels I find useful.
Content Standards
I define content standards as statements that describe what students should know or be able to do within the content of a specific discipline or at the intersection of two or more disciplines. Examples would include
Students will classify objects along two dimensions.
Describe effects of physical activity on the body.
Present employment-related information in the target language.
Process Standards
I define process standards as statements that describe skills students should develop to enhance the process of learning. Process standards are not specific to a particular discipline, but are generic skills that are applicable to any discipline. Examples would include
Students will set realistic goals for their performance.
Seriously consider the ideas of others.
Find and evaluate relevant information.
Value Standards
I define value standards as statements that describe attitudes teachers would like students to develop towards learning. Examples would include
Students will value diversity of opinions or perspectives.
Take responsible risks. (Costa & Kallick)
Persist on challenging tasks.
Dr. Mueller
Enduring ..........
Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Is it a Content or a Process Standard?
Given the definitions listed above, the same standard could be either a content or a process standard. For example, the standard students will write a coherent essay would be a process standard in a history course because it is not describing content within the discipline of history. Rather, it describes a useful skill that historians should have along with those working in other disciplines. However, if the same standard were part of an English composition course, I would label it a content standard because students would be learning the content of that discipline. Yes, writing skills are useful in any discipline, but in the composition course it is being taught as content for the course.
Dr. Mueller
Enduring ..........
Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Authentic Tasks
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Authentic Task:
An assignment given to students designed to assess their ability to apply standard-driven knowledge and skills to real-world challenges
In other words, a task we ask students to perform is considered authentic when 1) students are asked to construct their own responses rather than select from ones presented and 2) the task replicates challenges faced in the real world. (Of course, other definitions abound.)
If I were teaching you how to play golf, I would not determine whether you had met my standards by giving you a multiple-choice test. I would put you out on the golf course to "construct your own responses" in the face of real-world challenges. Similarly, in school we are ultimately less interested in how much information students can acquire than how well they can use it. Thus, our most meaningful assessments ask students to perform authentic tasks.
However, these tasks are not just assessments. 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' solution to the problem becomes an assessment of how well the students can meaningfully apply the concepts.
Dr. Mueller
Enduring ..........
Md. Mostafa Rashel:
Characteristics of Authentic Tasks
Another way that authentic assessment is commonly distinguished from traditional assessment is in terms of their defining attributes. Of course, traditional assessments as well as authentic assessments vary considerably in the forms they take. But, typically, along the continuums of attributes listed below, traditional assessments fall more towards the left end of each continuum and authentic assessments 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.
Dr. Mueller
Enduring ..........
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