Authentic Intellectual Work: What and Why?1
Fred M. Newmann
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Introduction
As reported in this newsletter, the Authentic Pedagogy in the
Social Studies (APSS) professional development project helped teachers to
understand and implement "authentic" teaching, especially the part of teaching
in which teachers create more challenging and interesting assessments to
evaluate learning. Results of the project show that teachers can improve
their assessments and when they do, students perform at higher levels. We
hope these promising results lead to further efforts to implement authentic
pedagogy.
But as administrators, professional development providers and teachers
themselves try to extend this approach they must be careful to avoid the
trap of assuming that specific practices will necessarily promote high quality
intellectual work. Research on school restructuring across the nation indicates
that lists of specific practices and strategies are not likely to stimulate
higher quality work, because they may be implemented in ways that promote
a high or low quality of intellectual work. Since the point of professional
development to promote authentic instruction and assessment is to help students
produce more authentic intellectual work, it seems appropriate to begin
this newsletter by defining authentic intellectual work and explaining why
teachers should aim for it. To avoid the distractions of the many "best
practices" that emerge from time to time, we must keep our eyes on the goal—the
kind of intellectual work we want students to produce.
What is Authentic Intellectual Work?
For several years policy makers, corporate leaders and key commissions
have been demanding that we raise the intellectual quality of schoolwork
for all students. Despite the broad agreement on the need to elevate intellectual
quality, there is little national agreement on what this should mean in
practice. The prospects of reaching precise agreement on the kind of curriculum
and learning experiences that represent high intellectual quality at a national,
state, district, or school level are complicated by societal tensions regarding
the issue of uniformity versus diversity in standards: Under what circumstances
and throughout what constituencies should all students and their teachers
be held to common standards and when should expectations be differentiated
according to individual student interest, ability, cultural values, or the
desire for local control by parents, schools, districts and states?
Our research at the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools
(CORS) proposed a conception of high quality intellectual work that could
be used to evaluate the level of intellectual quality of diverse curricula,
assessments, and student work products without taking a stand on the specific
content that ought to be learned. We formulated the conception by examining
the cognitive activity of adults who worked successfully with knowledge
in a variety of occupations and settings (e.g., journalists, jurists, designers,
teachers, auto mechanics, photo copy technicians, customer service representatives,
physicians and child care providers). We looked for common features in the
cognitive work done by adults successful in these fields that might distinguish
their work from the work usually done by students in school. We called such
intellectual work "authentic" because it requires high-level cognitive performance
(i.e., rigorous, in-depth understanding instead of only superficial acquaintance
with memorized bits of knowledge) and it results in personally, aesthetically
or socially useful products and services, instead of completed exercises
that were contrived only for the purpose showing of competence or to please
teachers.
We articulated three broad criteria for authentic intellectual work:2
-
Construction of Knowledge: using or
manipulating knowledge as in analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and
evaluation, rather than only reproducing knowledge in previously stated
forms.
-
Disciplined Inquiry: gaining in-depth
understanding of limited topics, rather than superficial acquaintance
with many, and using elaborated forms of communication to learn and
to express one's conclusions.
-
Value Beyond School: the production
of discourse, products, and performances that have personal, aesthetic,
or social significance beyond demonstration of success to a teacher.
This definition insists that high quality intellectual work be grounded
in knowledge, concepts, and perspectives of academic, professional, or applied
technical disciplines and that it be directed to understanding issues, problems,
or questions of significance beyond classrooms and schools. Unfortunately,
the term "authentic" is commonly used to refer only to the "real world"
dimension, but in our view this is insufficient. If intellectual work is
to be authentic, it must be based on rigorous thinking and grounded in the
substantive knowledge of the disciplines in addition to being "relevant"
to students' lives. Another misconception is the assumption that emphasis
on authentic intellectual work entails neglect of or reduced attention to
"basic" knowledge and skills. To the contrary, success in authentic intellectual
work requires use of extensive knowledge and academic skills. The point
is not to avoid basic knowledge and skills, but to teach the "basics" in
ways that promote the production of authentic intellectual work and move
beyond them to more complex intellectual challenges.
Why Should Schools Promote Authentic Intellectual Work?
There are several reasons for shifting education to more vigorous promotion
of authentic intellectual work. First, success in work, civic participation,
and managing personal affairs in contemporary U.S. society demands it. Most
workers now face workplace demands for critical thinking, problem-solving,
communication, and teamwork that confronted only a small portion of the
workforce 20 years ago. For example, according to one study a person who
installs wheels at an automobile plant must also evaluate the quality of
the installation and work with other employees to solve production problems
and improve performance on the assembly line (Murnane & Levy, 1996). But
complex intellectual demands also reach beyond the workplace into participation
in civic life and managing personal affairs. Consider a citizen trying to
make an informed decision about whether the performance of an elected officeholder
merits reelection over challengers, or trying to make a convincing public
statement to increase local funding for school security.3
Imagine a single mother of preschool children calculating the costs and
benefits of working while paying for child care, or choosing among child
care providers. Or what about a brother and sister, each with young children
and spouses, and limited financial resources, trying to decide how to allocate
responsibility for the care for their disabled parent? All of these examples
demonstrate the importance of being able to construct knowledge through
disciplined inquiry to solve problems in the world beyond school.
Second, participation in authentic intellectual activity appears to motivate
students to invest in the hard work that learning requires, including learning
the basics, more so than traditional schooling. Teachers report that authentic
work is often more interesting and meaningful to students than repeated
drill aimed at disconnected knowledge and skills. Research also indicates
that students exposed to authentic intellectual challenges are more engaged
in their schoolwork than students exposed to more conventional schoolwork
(Avery, 1999; Kane et al., 1997; Marks (in press); Newmann & Associates,
1996).
Third, the criteria for authentic intellectual work help to define a
focused school mission. The language is specific enough to identify what
intellectual quality means, but also general enough to be applied to more
specific content standards in a variety of subject areas and across different
grade levels and ages. Teachers who teach specific content in English, Social
Studies, Math, or Science can use these criteria as a common school-wide
framework to keep the focus on high intellectual quality and inform how
the content is taught to achieve that end. The criteria constitute a common
ground, and thus provide a common intellectual agenda to promote professional
community within schools.
Some people have told us that all of this makes sense, but the goal is
unrealistic, because teachers are either incapable of or unwilling to teach
for more authentic intellectual work and students are incapable of producing
it. An increasing body of evidence, including the work of the project reported
here, refutes these claims. Although authentic pedagogy and authentic student
achievement are rare, the evidence indicates that both teachers and students
can achieve it when given the right opportunities and support.4
References
Archbald, D.A., & Newmann F.M. (1988). Beyond standardized testing:
Assessing authentic academic achievement in secondary schools. Reston,
VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals.
Aristotle (1946). The politics of Aristotle (Sir Ernest Barker,
Trans.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Avery, P.G. (1999), Authentic instruction and assessment. Social Education,
65(6), 368-373.
Barber, B.R. (1984). Strong democracy: Participatory politics for
a new age. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Dewey, J. (1916/1966). Democracy and education. New York: Free
Press.
Jefferson, T. (1939). Democracy (Saul K. Padover, Ed.). New York:
D. Appleton-Century Company.
Kane, M.B., Khattri, N., Reeve, A.L., Adamson, R.J., & Pelavin Research
Institute (1995). Assessment of student performance: Studies of education
reform (3 vols.). Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and
Improvement, U.S. Department of Education.
Marks, H.M. (in press). Student engagement in instructional activity:
Patterns in elementary, middle, and high schools. American Educational
Research Journal, 37(1).
Murnane, R.J., & Levy, F. (1996). Teaching the new basic skills: Principles
for children to thrive in a changing economy. New York: Free Press.
Newmann, F.M. & Associates (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring
schools for intellectual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Newmann, F.M., Lopez, G. & Bryk, A.S. (1998). The quality of intellectual
work in Chicago schools: A baseline report. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago
School Research.
Newmann, F.M., Secada, W.G. & Wehlage, G.G. (1995). A guide to authentic
instruction and assessment: Vision, standards and scoring. Madison,
WI: Document Service, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Newmann, F.M. & Wehlage, G.G. (1995). Successful school restructuring:
A report to the public and educators. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center
on Education Research.
Endnotes
1Most of the material in this article has
been taken from the author's previous publications cited in the references.
2The conception of authentic intellectual
work was proposed originally by Archbald and Newmann (1988) and then revised
and elaborated with specific criteria for describing authentic instruction,
authentic assessment tasks, and the scoring of student work in Newmann,
Secada and Wehlage (1995). Further elaboration of these ideas and empirical
research showing a connection between authentic pedagogy and authentic student
achievement in many schools across the United States is presented in Newmann
and Associates (1996) and Newmann, Lopez and Bryk (1998).
3Writers from Aristotle (trans. 1946) to Jefferson
(1939 version) to Dewey (1916/1966) to recent political scientists (Barber,
1984) contend that maintenance and enrichment of democracy require citizens
capable not only of basic literacy, but also of exercising principled and
reasoned judgment about increasingly complex issues of community life.
4In addition to evidence presented in this
newsletter, see Newmann and Associates (1996) and Newmann, Lopez and Bryk
(1998). While the evidence of success is encouraging, there are major obstacles
to large scale acceptance and implementation of these ideas. Substantial
efforts will be needed to overcome cultural resistance to these ideas, to
increase professional capacity to teach along these lines, and to improve
school organization in order to offer more support for authentic intellectual
work in school.
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