When is an activity authentic?
It is clear that many activities in which students are required to engage
are not 'authentic' for them - in that they serve no purpose to which they
are committed (other than getting through the school day with minimum
hassle).
Ideally, it might seem that, to be authentic, activities should be such
that students would choose to engage in them because of their intrinsic
interest and the satisfaction they gain from them. This is presumably true
of many of the activities in which they engage with peers outside school -
in the course of which they are certainly learning matters that are
important for them. But to make this the criterion for authenticity in the
case of classroom activities would be unsatisfactory for two reasons: 1.
Many of the activities in which students are interested cannot, by their
very nature, be brought within the classroom. 2. More important, many of
the projects in which we are interested and to which we become committed
were embarked on at someone else's suggestion, perhaps even at their
requirement.
If we make interest and commitment criterial for authenticity - as I
suggest we should - it seems that we cannot be sure in advance which
activities will prove to be authentic for which students. This suggests
that there needs to be scope for student choice and negotiation in
undertaking activities. In other words, activities become authentic when
learners take "ownershp" and make the goals their own. How to achieve this
must be an ongoing inquiry for teachers. In fact I would propose it as one
of the key criteria by which to judge whether a classroom is functioning
as a "community of
inquiry" according to (social) constructivist principles.
What do you think? Are the assignments that you are carrying out in this
course authentic?
-------------------------
Gordon Wells
gwells who-is-at oise.utoronto.ca
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~gwells
Visit Networks, the Online Journal for Teacher Research
http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/~ctd/networks