Read a review of Seminar #7 – Authentic Assessment

21 July 2023

In this post CRADLE Fellowship holder Dr Tim Chambers reviews our latest seminar presentation ‘Authentic assessment in undergraduate science: A critical realist perspective’. This seminar was presented by Associate Professor Mags Blackie and Dr Robyn Yucel.

In their joint presentation on a critical realist perspective of authentic assessment for undergraduate students, Associate Professor Mags Blackie and Dr Robyn Yucel spoke passionately for the teaching of nature of science as transferrable knowledge in these cohorts.

Their metacognitive work challenged the worldviews of practitioners and argued that we should be teaching the nature of science that aligns with the practice of science, and the views of practising scientists. In doing so, they advocated for the augmentation of assessment tasks so that these tasks better embraced the authentic inquiry of the nature of science.

To frame their research on authentic assessments, Mags and Robyn highlighted the value of Jan McArthur’s (2023) recent call for educators to rethink authentic assessment tasks. Specifically, Mags and Robyn emphasised the need to redesign our authentic assessment tasks to consider the interplay between the individual, the task, and society, as doing so will likely help the student to find more meaning in the actual task itself. Implicit within this point was the notion that previous conceptualisations of authentic assessments (i.e., the designing of tasks to mirror the real-world) were inadequate for teaching students the nature of science, which was best exemplified by the quote:

Authentic assessment is not assessment that mirrors the world as it is, but that which pushes the possibilities of what the world could be

McArthur, 2023

Before showcasing how this reframing applied to their own research, Mags and Robyn enticed seminar attendees to consider knowing how things are known. In do so, they were clear on the point that conceptual competency is central to our curriculum and must remain as such. However, they argued that there is scope to enable students to experience a personal transformation and shift in worldviews by adopting their reframe on teaching the nature of science. Fundamental to their thinking is the fact that many undergraduate science students do not end up working in scientific vocations, meaning that our view of authenticity needs to change.

Leading with the notion of authentic assessment tasks that are ‘fit for purpose’, Mags and Robyn advocated that the missing element is how we teach the nature of science. That is, teaching students to learn about science. At this point it became clear what employing Bhaskar’s (1978) critical realism to ground their work offered in favour of the classic dichotomy between the mind-independent reality of positivism and socially constructed knowledge acquisition. It is here, according to Mags and Robyn, that critical realism affords us a nested view of reality. Their own research of chemistry educators nicely illustrated this point. In particular, the cognitive dissonance demonstrated when the same educators spoke about the exclusive practices of objectivity and subjectivity in the same interview!

In sum, this thought-provoking presentation incites new possibilities regarding the conceptualisation, design, and implementation of authentic assessment. And as we wait for the next instalment of their work, Mags notes we can each start by augmenting our assessment tasks in pursuing the authentic inquiry of the nature of science.

References

McArthur, J. (2023). Rethinking authentic assessment: work, well-being, and society. Higher Education 85, 85–101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00822-y

Baskhar, R. (1978). A realist theory of science. Harvester Press. https://www.routledge.com/A-Realist-Theory-of-Science/Bhaskar/p/book/9780415454940