CAVEAT: This exploration is one part of a series on Authentic Assessment. Consider reviewing the library of prior posts to capture the whole picture. The AAQ reference is to a teacher’s “Authentic Assessment Quotient” of how frequently authentic assessments are integrated in courses and how deeply and fully the educator understands the aspects of authentic assessment. These are not for the faint-hearted! If you want it easy and fast, have an AI make a test for you which can be automatically graded. If you want something deep and rich which has lasting impact, personal development, and absolute differentiation for the needs of each student, read on.
Each authentic assessment is a personal journey. Crafting them takes time. Coaching students through them takes strength and commitment to the core of the learning objectives. For students, it takes openness, trust, and a fair amount of resilience. Why resilience? A truly authentic assessment experience bears the risk of ultimate failure.
For educators, giving students an open choice in selecting the pathway for assessment is, honestly, a bit frightening. Parents understand this process a bit better because the life their child pursues is, in essence, an authentic assessment process. Our children choose their own way. Sometimes they are successful and learn all of the important lessons the first time. Other times, it may take a second chance, or more. The hard lesson for parents to learn is that children may follow a path which the parents would not choose for them or, even moreso, which the parents would insist that their children avoid. I, personally, lean on faith, knowing that the Creator in whom I believe sees everything and is handling what I cannot. As teachers, the whole life trajectory is not the objective of a single assessment for class — just a little bit of real-world learning. Thank goodness!
Enter Autonomy
A core component of authentic assessment is the opportunity of the learner to engage in autonomous topic selection and exploration. This does not mean that students can do anything they want. Autonomy is focused on self-determination and a unique direction which suits their interests, talents, and skills. For example, a project may involved communicating information to the public after researching a topic. In authentic assessment, learners should have the opportunity to create and customize a variety of methods. One student may make a poster, another may make a video, still another may speak to small groups. Displays may be written or artistic, musical or spoken word, large-scale or small-scale. All of the students are communicating information, but they are making a choice about how that gets done. Presumably, a student who does some video editing on YouTube for fun could apply those skills to the project delivery. A student with a unique network of individuals, like a youth group, might feel especially comfortable talking within that group to transmit the message. Both are learning, completing the task, and working within their own realm. They are each successful, but have completed the objective using vastly different methods.
Why Self-Determination and Autonomy?
Frankly, this is the realm of psychological development in middle school and high school. Psych 101 explores: 1) the Freudian theories of id, ego, and superego; 2) the Piagetian cognitive stages of child development; and 3) the Jungian quest for meaning in a complex world. Part of Carl Jung’s approach addresses the need for teens to individuate from the forces that control them — parents, teachers, and society — while still trying to find a healthy relationship with each. Anyone who has been in the vicinity of teenager for more than five minutes understands that they are in a constant push-pull angst about their connection to the world. They need the support system, but they hate the support system for exerting control over them. Hence, they need to individuate or to find a way to cope with the demands of adulthood approaching them. However, like the groundhog in February, sometime running back to the burrow is much more attractive.
Providing teens an open structure or framework for task completion, limited examples and resources, but the encouragement to use others, and the ability to set their own specific goal which achieves a generally agreed upon purpose feeds their need for self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2017). It’s a matter of loosening the reins so that they can have the range of motion to exercise and stretch. For educators (and parents) who perpetually want to establish fences and guardrails, the negative impacts are twofold — the child will not reach the extent of learning that is possible AND they will resent the effort to keep them bound to a small sphere. Simply, the result of not permitting authentic assessment and self-determination in the choices of a project or summative evaluation is that learners will not be able to cope with the demands of the real world when it is necessary for them to do so.
Training Wheels and Safety Nets
Just because middle school and high school students need this process to proceed to the next step of being adults does not mean they are ready for it with no conditions. In authentic assessment, the educator must clearly and explicitly identify the goal and any specific limitations. A few guardrails are fine. For example, if you are going to meet with a business, you must have parental permission and document your plan with interview questions reviewed by the teacher. This is just a safety measure and a method to help students to think before they act. They do need a little reminder of that, now and then.
Giving students a reporting or journaling structure is a good way for them to see the process and, sometimes, to see where they went off track in their exploration. These can always be important artifacts for the teacher to maintain a grading structure for the assignment that is not prescriptive, but can be common to all students, no matter what exploration they are undertaking.
The other key role of educators while students are pursuing their topics is to serve as a home base to coach them. “I did this and it didn’t work. I can’t do this” is one possible reaction, to which a seasoned teacher asks for more explanation and suggests a pivot, or a next step that the student hasn’t considered, then shoos them off to get back to work. Sometimes it’s resource links. Sometimes it’s pushing for a more complex solution than the easy one they thought would work. Sometimes it’s reassuring them and encouraging persistence. Every project is a different path with different information. Isn’t that better than grading the same essay prompt 70-100 times?!
Spreading Their Wings
Pushing the little bird out of the nest is natural; keeping them in the nest and feeding them regurgitated worms when they are big enough to fly is not. This is the state of nature. Teens need to explore work of their own. Sometimes they will succeed. Sometimes they will fail. The bottom line is that they can’t fly if they are tethered to the classroom doing the same assessments that have been done by students for years on end.
In the process of exploring a learning objective, they will develop skills which were fostered in the classroom, but proofed in the larger world. They will weigh the value of their choices. They will learn to be independent — yes, this cannot be a group project! That doesn’t mean that they can’t connect with classmates about their work, just that they can’t be co-dependent. In the process of exploring individually and sharing with peers, they will gain new respect for the skills they are developing and the endeavors that they are undertaking. Partnerships which value and trade necessary skills are absolutely authentic to real-world networks. Much more is possible when educators push students to think and act for themselves, even when the risks of failure are real. The opportunity to learn and grow is far greater.
Teacher Takeaways
Autonomous choices and exploration are essential to authentic assessment because they approximate the demands students face in the future as they become self-determined individuals through practice.
Beyers, W., Soenens, B., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2024). Autonomy in adolescence: A conceptual, developmental and cross-cultural perspective. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2024.2330734
Jung, C. (1969). A study in the process of individuation. Collected Works of CG Jung, (Part 1): Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. 2014;9. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.290
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. The Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10.1521/978.14625/28806
EmpowerED 