'Authentic assessment: from panacea to criticality' by
Tim Fawns, Margaret Bearman, Phillip Dawson, Juuso Henrik Nieminen, Kevin Ashford-Rowe and Keith Willey in
(2024)
Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education comments
Authentic assessment contrasts with ‘traditional’ forms of assessment in ways that appear to be significant and, largely, positive. However, authentic assessment is often invested with superpowers, including the ability to: surmount academic integrity concerns (Sotiriadou et al. 2020); make assessment more inclusive (Nieminen 2024); and ensure relevancy to future personal, social and professional contexts (Ashford-Rowe, Herrington, and Brown 2014; Villarroel et al. 2018; Ajjawi et al. 2020; McArthur 2023). This view finds its way into assessment policies and teaching and learning resources that uncritically blend authenticity with inclusion, integrity or preparation of graduates for the future (e.g. University of Reading 2023; University of Oxford 2024). In this paper, we argue that the promotion of authentic assessment as an answer to a broad range of complex problems unhelpfully positions it as a panacea.
Authentic assessment is often positioned as the ‘silver bullet’ solution for critical, urgent and widespread challenges in our current higher education environment (Ajjawi et al. 2023). While literature supports some potential benefits of authentic assessment in relation to challenges of cheating, inclusion, and the application and future relevance of learning, in principle (Ashford-Rowe, Herrington, and Brown 2014; Villarroel et al. 2018; Sokhanvar, Salehi, and Sokhanvar 2021), there is very limited evidence of how, and the extent to which, authentic assessment actually does this in practice, or the relationship between authenticity and these other concerns (Ajjawi et al. 2023). Indeed, the review by Villarroel et al. (2018) showed that the vast majority of authentic assessment studies do not feature a clear model or practical guidelines for authentic assessment.
We have concerns that the label ‘authentic assessment’ is sometimes applied without sufficient interrogation of how aspirations of authenticity relate to broader contexts and purposes of assessment. This worry has a historical basis: higher education discourse has seen a range of panacea concepts come and go. Successive educational technologies – including print, radio, television, online, tablets, MOOCs, and now artificial intelligence (AI) – have been associated with ‘magical thinking’ around their capacity to solve complex educational problems (Cuban and Jandrić 2015), with promises of what should happen greatly outstripping the reality of what does happen (Selwyn 2013). Pedagogical innovations – such as student-centredness, constructive alignment, and active learning – have been suggested in response to problems of student learning, engagement and motivation (e.g. Freeman et al. 2014). Even higher education itself is commonly portrayed as a panacea for various global issues such as poverty and unemployment (see, e.g. Ostrowicka 2022). In each case, a concept or label covers over the need for nuanced negotiation and integration of new approaches into particular contexts. Similarly, where the label ‘authentic assessment’ is treated as sufficient explanation for what is actually a complex approach to assessment design and implementation, it can become a distraction (Arnold and Croxford 2024) or even a thought-terminating cliché (Lifton 1961) that hampers important conversations and considerations of the tensions between multiple purposes and practicalities.
In this paper, we examine the relationship between authenticity in assessment and three ‘problems’ it is often purported to address: preparing graduates for their futures; cheating; and inclusion. We have chosen these challenges because of their complexity, their significance, and the primacy of authentic assessment as a solution within current educational discourse. In our discussions, we consider how authenticity can be used as a principle alongside or within more targeted approaches to different assessment purposes. We argue that, if we think beyond authentic assessment as a form of assessment to conceive of authenticity as just one aspect to thoughtfully and judiciously consider within the design, we can more clearly see and address real problems and purposes of assessment and higher education more broadly.
