Part A

A Review of the Literature on Authentic Assessment

Introduction

As with all forms of educational assessment, authentic assessment is appreciated

by some and considered problematic by others. Assessment has long been an integral

aspect of education. It serves to provide teachers, students and parents with a means to

see the progress of students; what they have learned, how well they have learned it and

guidelines for the teacher to facilitate their future progress.

Authentic assessment is also known as performance assessment, appropriate,

direct or alternative assessment. Schuman (1992) agrees that this type of assessment can

provide a more realistic and comprehensive means of assessing students. “Authentic

evaluation can provide more information than any multiple-choice test possibly could.

As they promote the thinking curriculum everyone wants for children, authentic

evaluations will provide genuine accountability.”

Definition of Terms

It is useful here to provide a definition of some of the terms that will be used in this

literature review.

1. Assessment: The term assessment is applied to a wide range of methods by which

information about students is gathered and appraised, including formal testing and

analysis. Gathering information about children as a result of day-to-day informal

interactions is part of teaching and is equally a part of assessment (Humphrey 1991).

The following terms are taken from the research by Dr. Hugh Baird 1

2. Evaluation: This is a process of comparing students with other students or

with a predetermined standard. It is also a process that is used to rank students.

Evaluation which measures student learning in order to identify how well they are

learning or how much of the subject matter they have mastered in order to help them

learn more or to help the teacher to improve ongoing instruction is formative. Evaluation

which tests students' performance to determine students' final overall assimilation of

course material and/or overall instructional method effectiveness is summative.

3. Norm-referenced Evaluation: Norm-referenced evaluation is evaluation based on a

comparison of a student's performance with one or more other student's performance on

the same test.

4. Criterion-referenced evaluation is evaluation based on a comparison of a student's

performance with a preset performance standard which is determined independently of

the test, or test scores.

5. Validity: The validity of a test may be defined as the degree to which a test measures

what it is supposed to measure. Since validity is a matter of degree, it is incorrect to say

that a test is either valid or invalid. All tests have some degree of validity for any purpose

for which they are used; however, some are much more valid than others.

6. Reliability: Reliability refers to the consistency of test results.

1
These definitions are taken from the following document; Hugh Baird. (1997).
“Performance Assessment for Science Teachers”. Utah State Office of Education. The
document can be found at: http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/curr/science/Perform/Past1.htm
7. Rating Scale: Typically, a rating scale consists of a set of characteristics or qualities

to be judged and some type of scale for indicating the degree to which each characteristic

is present. The rating scale itself is merely a reporting device.

A General Review of The Literature on Authentic Assessment

Previously, students were primarily assessed using standardized testing – tests

which provided students with questions that demanded a choice of either a right or wrong

answer. But, like all facets of society, education too must change and this process has

already begun with authentic assessment. According to Robertson and Valentine (2000),

authentic assessment is a means to assess all students even those with special needs. It is

more learner-centered and thus it improves not only student learning but program and

instructor effectiveness. “Authentic assessment refers to evaluation that makes use of real

life tasks instead of contrived test items.”

The role of assessment is seen in a much broader context than simply giving a

student a test and waiting to see if they can provide the right answers. In this context,

assessment is a tool which employs the use of real-life tasks and will, in turn drive

education in a much different direction. The use of standardized testing implied that

teachers would often have to teach for the test. That is, teacher instruction and the

curriculum would be designed specifically to teach students the facts or information that

would be covered on their various tests throughout the year. This leads one to the

conclusion that education in such a context would be fact driven – providing students

with facts to learn, perhaps even memorize. Ultimately, they would know what facts they

were required to know – those that would be covered on the test.

 The concern here is that teaching students in this fashion and testing them in this

way does not really provide them with any chance for creativity, nor does it measure

them effectively. “The current movement toward authentic assessment grows out of

concern that standardized tests do not accurately measure how well students can think

and solve problems, what subjects they know in-depth, or how responsible they are for

directing their own learning” (Allen 1993).

Another reason for moving towards authentic assessment has been the concern

that standardized tests merely determine how well one student is doing in comparison to

another. P. Johnston (1992) opines that this information has no real value in the

educational system. “What we should be interested in is whether each child is growing,

not whether he is better than the child next to him or a child across the district or the

country […] evaluating a child’s progress is instructionally useful and comparing to him

or her to someone else is not.”

Craig and McCormick (2002) point out that standardized tests have been

criticized for years due to the fact that “[…] research has proven testing not to be an

effective measure of student learning […].” According to these researchers (Ibid), the

primary failure of standardized testing is that it addresses the question “which child

knows more?” Authentic assessment addresses the question, “how much does my child

know?” These two authors are not alone in their critique of standardized testing. Much of

the literature on authentic assessment focuses on the failure of standardized testing to

provide students, teachers, parents or even the educational system with information that is

truly relevant or helpful in any fashion.