Authenticity and Relevance
Value Beyond School
I have been reading and re-reading some of the ideas found in the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow 2 (ACOT2) document and this idea struck me as quite relevant. In the section 
that discusses the concepts of authenticity and relevance, they site the work of Fred Newmann (1995) from University of Wisconsin who has deļ¬ned a set of standards for Authentic Instruction, Authentic Student Performance, and Authentic Assessment Tasks which are organized into the following three areas:
-Construction of Knowledge
-Disciplined Inquiry
-Value Beyond School
To quote the section on Value Beyond School,
“The performance must have value beyond the school; that is, the work must have meaning or value that transcends the student-teacher relationship and is not simply used to rate the performance of the student for grading purposes. This value may be a result of sharing the work in a meaningful way with an audience outside the classroom. It may also have value simply because the topic and product are personally valued by the student. Or it may be that the product or task closely mirrors the kind of work done in the real world and that relationship is clearly evident to the student.”
The authors of the ACOT2 document state that of Newmann’s three areas listed above , this one has been the most difficult to realize. But with the addition of so many new publishing tools like blogs and wikis, it has become much easier to realize.
This is where I began to see things differently. The implication here is that it is the tools that bring value to student work beyond school. Granted, these new Internet-based publishing and collaborative tools make student work and thinking more accessible to a global audience, but the work of the students must still be important, relevant, and worthy of a global audience. I remember a while back when Gary Stager was criticizing (scroll down to post titled, “Mind-mapping What?”) the zeal of teachers who were putting up student-created “mind maps” generated with Inspiration. At first I reacted quite defensively, but then I began to understand what he was getting at. Students were creating “mind candy” with this potentially powerful tool. The tool’s strength lies in one’s ability to semantically map out and represent a concept or idea in detail. To produce documents that have the word apple in the middle with three adjectives stemming outward does not even come close to the potential power of this tool to make one’s thinking visible and to expose flaws or misconceptions in understanding or thinking.
The same holds true in the use of new publishing and collaborative tools like blogs and wikis. Students can share shallow thinking and contrived work or share valuable, meaningful, relevant and powerful ideas. The tools used to publish and share do not discriminate. It is up to the teacher to guide students and demand high-quality work and critical thinking.
And THAT is still just as hard to realize in a web 2.0 world. I think the authors of ACOT2 missed this critical idea in relating it to web 2.0 tools in this section. However, they more than redeem themselves a little later on in the document when they introduce the importance of “Deep Learning”:
“Deep Learning requires deep teaching. Teachers must give students challenging tasks that require them to wrestle with core concepts in the curriculum and the time to do so.”
To me, this is the linch pin upon which all else hinges. To learn well means to teach well. Effective and meaningful pedagogies have not really changed all that much over the years, but there are a great many new tools and new learning opportunities that can be harnessed and found via new technologies. Deep teaching is still required.
And, part of relevance is not just content of the concepts, but the tools used to express ideas.
To quote,
“If student work is to be truly authentic, the tools and methodologies that are used to do that work need to be authentic as well.”
Authenticity and relevance are certainly at risk in schools today…
So is deep teaching/learning. Can we have one without the other?
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March 7th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
On the point of the level of published student work, I agree that students, or anyone, can create mediocre or sub-standard content, but as a former writing teacher, I have to be optimistic that writing for a real audience produces better writing than just writing for an imagined audience–which turns out to be only the teacher.
I tried valiantly to encourage students to imagine that audience, but I don’t think it worked for them. When I started having them create for websites or blogs, I think the writing was better, or at least that students wanted to write better.
Now, I have only taught college writing and cannot speak for children who are urged to publish, but in general, I think that ownership of work is felt more strongly when it is a product to be consumed by a real audience (forgive the consumer metaphor).
As a professional writer, I am able to imagine my professional audience, that audience that will read the journal I aim to write for, but that takes a lot of work to be able to maintain that imaginary audience.
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March 7th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Good point… a “real” audience is always so much better than writing for the teacher. It’s just too bad that we have waited so long to embrace this idea with the emergence of things like blogs and wikis. We have ignored very real communities right around us for decades.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
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March 8th, 2009 at 3:19 am
There needs to be a clear delineation between public and published. All work should be public, not all work should be published.
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March 8th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Gary, great point. That is what I was getting at with my reply to Barbara. The work of our students has rarely been public – often because what we have asked them to produce is of little consequence. New technologies have made it easier to go public in the virtual sense, blurring the lines between public and published. We need to make sure we communicate the difference better both to our students and to potential audiences.
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