Designing Quality Authentic Assessments

Tay Hui Yong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351715430
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book examines the principles and practice of authentic assessment. It seeks to answer the following questions. What is authentic assessment? How is authentic assessment different from 'performance assessment' or 'alternative assessment'? How can authentic assessment support learner-centred education, especially when a performance-oriented culture favours pen-and-paper examinations?

The book is structured into two major parts. The first, 'Principles of authentic assessment design', provides readers with a conceptual explanation of authenticity; the principles for designing quality authentic assessments for valid evidence of student learning; and guidance about how to develop quality rubrics to structure assessment tasks.

The second part of the book, 'Theory into practice' provides examples developed by teachers to demonstrate an understanding of authentic assessment. The subject areas covered include humanities, languages, mathematics, sciences, character and citizenship. Two case studies are discussed to demonstrate how authentic assessment can be used to comprehensively address key learning objectives in a variety of curriculum contexts.

This book provides practitioners with concrete examples on how to develop authentic assessment to suit their context and also enhance their students' learning. The book will also enable teachers to face assessment challenges present in our changing world.

Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

PART I

Principles of authentic assessment design

1

What is “authenticity” in authentic assessment?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315179131-3

Introduction

This chapter intends to clarify the concept of “authentic assessments” (AA). It begins by examining it against other assessment terms. The examples will also serve to illustrate the concepts being discussed, particularly the concept of “authenticity” (to what? and to whom? and for what?) with reference to prominent writers in the field.

• As part of show-and-tell during an English language class, seven-year-old students are asked to bring their favourite fruit. They take turns to make an oral presentation in front of their classmates, describing the fruit and explaining why they love it.

• After lessons on physical properties of materials, students work in groups to create a boat with a given list of suggested materials. They will present their boat, justifying their choice of materials. They will also be required to test out their boat: to travel 1.5 m with the aid of a battery-operated fan, in the shortest time.

• At the end of a series of lessons on the four stages of statistical studies: Collection, organisation, display (pictogram, bar graph, pie chart, line graph) and interpretation of data, students conduct a survey to find out how often schoolmates eat fast food, and display results in a statistical diagram, justifying their choice.

Clarifying types versus purposes of assessments

These are examples of assessment tasks that teachers have designed (see previous page). Do you consider these examples to be one or some of the following?

• Alternative assessments?

• Performance assessments?

• Authentic assessments?

Some working definitions

Alternative assessments

Meaningful assessments that are not “traditional” (which is typically paper-and-pen).

Performance assessments

Tasks that require learners to produce product or behaviours that directly reflect the range of knowledge and skills they have learnt.

It is understandable that teachers find these terms confusing because oftentimes, they are used interchangeably. “Alternative assessment” is a broad term to refer to assessments that differ from conventional ones which are often associated with paper-and-pen tests. As such, one type of alternative assessment in the language class is performance assessment (e.g., choral reading of a poem) especially if the conventional assessment involves a paper-and-pen essay. However, it is not to be taken for granted that the conventional is always of the paper-and-pen mode, e.g., in physical education classes where the conventional involves performance and the alternative may involve a paper-and-pen quiz. Hence, it is always helpful to define clearly at the start of the discussion what constitutes “conventional” and, hence, as a corollary, what constitutes “alternative”.

For example: Until recently in Singapore, Primary 1 students (seven-year-olds) had to sit for written examinations. These paper-and-pen assessments have since been replaced with assessments like show-and-tell. Now, show-and-tell is a common assessment mode found in primary schools. So, is it considered alternative assessment?

Also, consider the example of portfolios and project work, which are considered alternative assessment in schools but are, in fact, common place in vocational institutions. In short, assessments are not, by default, either alternative or not but are defined by what is conventional in the particular context.

Another step towards greater clarity is to differentiate between mode (alternative, authentic, performance assessments) and purpose of assessment (formative or summative).

Some working definitions

Summative purposes

Concerned with summing up or summarising the achievement status of a student, and is geared towards reporting at the end of a course of study especially for certification.

Formative purposes

Concerned with gathering assessment information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in ways that enhance on-going learning.

Different modes of assessments can serve either formative or summative purposes. However, because the conventional paper-and-pen test is often summative in nature, alternative assessments are often associated with formative purposes. Nonetheless, it is obvious that high-stakes examinations can serve formative purposes (e.g., when examiners give quality feedback to the candidate) and alternative assessments can be used to report on student achievement.

In short, the assessments shown on page 1 can be viewed as

• alternative if they are not part of the conventional assessments; or

• formative if the assessment information is used to enhance on-going learning.

Example 1.1

Example of how alternative assessments can serve both formative and summative purposes

Subject: English language and information and communications technology

Contributed by Diana Chua May Ling

Topic: Cyber wellness

Target Group: 15-year-olds (Secondary 3)

Standards: Plan and present information and ideas for a variety of purposes

Planning and organisation

• Identify purpose and audience of speaking and representing, and set goals in the context of assigned or self-selected topics.

• Generate ideas and details appropriate to the purpose, audience, context and culture.

• Gather, evaluate, select and synthesise facts and ideas from a variety of print and/or non-print sources, appropriate to the purpose, audience, context and culture.

Presentation

• Pronounce clearly and accurately consonants, vowels, consonant clusters and vowel combinations

• Speak clearly and eloquently using the appropriate voice qualities

Task

This is an EL/ICT collaborative project that all Secondary 3 students participate in annually. The project aims to first allow students to find out for themselves through research and collaborative efforts what cyber wellness is all about, why it is important and how it can be preserved in cyberspace to ensure the safety of online users; second, apply what they have learnt in visual comprehension and construct posters to succinctly capture the essence of cyber wellness; and third, do an oral presentation of their cyber wellness posters in a succinct and convincing manner to raise awareness of the topic among their peers. This is both a summative assessment task but it is also formative through the many opportunities for peer and teacher feedback to help students improve their posters and oral presentation.

But is it AA? That is the topic of the next section.

What is “authentic assessment”?

Having discussed alternative and formative assessment, let us examine more closely the other two terms, performance-based assessment and AA. Performance assessments require the student to make a product or demonstrate some behaviour that the assessor desires to measure. Examples that teachers are familiar with are the show-and-tell or portfolios mentioned earlier. AAs can be thought of as a “more realistic subset of performance assessments” (Messick, 1994, p. 5) because they require performances that parallel those in the real world. In short, every AA is performance assessment, but not vice versa (Meyer, 1992).

In Singapore language class, it is common for students to write narrative essays. However, such a performance assessment task can become an AA as well. For example, Secondary 2 students (14-year-olds) were asked to apply their narrative writing skills to write stories for pre-school children. Prior to the writing process, the students were supported with a talk by a writer who gave them tips and they borrowed children’s story books from the library as reference. The project...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Principles of authentic assessment design
• PART II Theory into practice
• Index