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THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
AUTHENTIC TASKS IN CLASSROOMS
IMPACT ON LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
DEVELOPING AND USING AUTHENTIC TASKS
LIMITATIONS IN USING AUTHENTIC TASKS
The instructional activities teachers provide for their students play an integral role in shaping what is learned in
classrooms. These activities, often referred to as tasks, are what students do to learn academic content and skills.
Tasks provide a structure and goal for learning in classrooms and require time to accomplish. They are meant to
engage students in an action, or sequence of actions, that require the application and production of knowledge.
Some types of tasks are authentic, which means they are situated in meaningful contexts that reflect the way
tasks might be found and approached in real life. Authentic tasks can encompass everyday situations, such as
organiz ing to make and sell t-shirts for a community fundraiser, or real-world activities undertaken in disciplines,
such as conducting an historical inquiry into the Lewis and Clark expedition. Authentic tasks are not the norm in
schools and classrooms, but research and contemporary perspectives on how students learn suggest that these
types of tasks are powerfully effective for learning.
A distinguishing feature of authentic tasks is that they have value and meaning beyond the classroom. When
students engage in authentic tasks, they do and experience what they, or other people, might do or experience in
a real-life setting. In a classroom, this might mean participating in real-world tasks that are similar to the kind of
tasks that experts engage in. For example, authentic tasks in a science classroom might require students to
conduct scientific investigations in a manner similar to how scientists conduct their work, but in ways that are
appropriate and meaningful for students. In this kind of science classroom, students might investigate the air and
water quality of their neighborhoods, examine how invasive species impact local habitats, or design and construct
a model erosion management system for a city park. As students engage in these tasks, they learn important
science content, develop skills that mirror the practices of expert scientists, and learn first-hand how to apply their
skills and knowledge in real-life, problem-solving contexts.
Authentic tasks are important because they provide meaning and motivation for learning. They provide students
with opportunities to relate to real-world situations, make connections to their own interests, and engage deeply
with subject matter. One of the key benefits of authentic tasks is that they introduce students to ways of reasoning
and problem solving that represent the work of professionals in practice, which has the advantage of helping
students build real-world expertise. As students engage in authentic tasks, they create products or artifacts that
showcase the skills and knowledge they have acquired. Often, these artifacts can be used for assessment
purposes in a manner that reflects the complexity of how performance is evaluated in the real world.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
In the early 20th century, the educator and philosopher John Dewey (1933) advocated the use of authentic tasks
to help students acquire and deepen subject matter knowledge and enhance their logical reasoning and selfregulation skills. Central to Dewey's view was that children learn best through purposeful activity and that realworld tasks are ideal for developing useful skills and knowledge. In subsequent decades, education researchers
and learning theorists elaborated further on the notion of authenticity. Their work sought to explain how authentic
tasks support thinking and to gain insight into the classroom conditions under which authentic tasks are most
effective.
An important idea that emerged from learning theory and research is that students construct more useful, robust,
and integrated knowledge when they are engaged in their learning and helped to develop sophisticated
understanding. Requiring students to merely carry out a task will not ensure learning. All too often, classroom
tasks result in the acquisition of discrete information that is not very meaningful, memorable, or usable.
Psychologist David Perkins (1993) calls such information, which often results from rote memoriz ing and is not
easily transferred to other situations, inert knowledge. For meaningful learning to occur, students need to be
cognitively engaged, or intellectually invested, and active in applying ideas. Cognitive engagement depends not
only on the task itself, but also on the context in which the task is situated. This idea is referred to as situated
cognition (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). Situated cognition emphasiz es that the activity and the context in
which the activity unfolds are integral to what is learned.
According to the situated cognition perspective, when students learn new information in the context of authentic
tasks, they are able to make sense of the new information and relate it to what they already know or have
experienced. In such cases new ideas are more likely to become intelligible because they are put in context.
Context provides students with a mental frame for making sense of the learning experience. Without some
framework in which to connect new ideas, students face difficulty in bringing together new information and
organiz ing it in a way that can be easily recalled and put to use.
Situated cognition also suggests that when students participate in authentic tasks, they acquire information about
the conditions and situations in which it is useful to know and apply what they have learned. As a result, they are
more likely to be able to take what they have learned in one situation and transfer it to another. Additionally,
students are more likely to make relevant connections between their academics and their personal lives. As
viewed through the situated cognition lens, authentic tasks engage students cognitively by providing
opportunities to actively think about, integrate, and apply ideas in situations that are relevant beyond the
classroom. This experience often results in learning that is personally meaningful and motivating for students.
situations for learning that heightens interest and motivates students to invest in their learning. More interest and
investment in learning can lead to higher levels of engagement. In turn, sustained cognitive engagement helps
students to acquire knowledge and skills as they go about working on tasks. A key benefit of authentic tasks, then,
is that they provide a meaningful and motivating backdrop for learning that affords opportunities to actively think
about and apply important ideas.
Research on authentic tasks indicates that when they are implemented they are associated with increased
achievement and motivation for learning (e.g., Hickey, Moore, & Pelligrino, 2001). Authenticity may be particularly
important for students from diverse backgrounds, especially those whose language and cultural backgrounds
differ from the mainstream, and who may not perceive relevant connections between school and their everyday
interests and lives. Luis Moll and colleagues (1992), for example, describe how teachers designed integrated
science and mathematics projects that involved parents sharing their knowledge and expertise regarding topics
connected to the surrounding community. Moll and his colleagues found that when teachers draw from students'
funds of knowledgethe cognitive, linguistic, and cultural resources that they bring to schoolto create tasks that
help students make connections, students find meaning in what they are learning and a reason to understand.
Overall, the research evidence on authentic tasks with learners in diverse school settings is encouraging:
Students benefit academically and show increased interest, motivation, and engagement. Tasks that help
students make connections also appear to help them to develop a more comprehensive and nuanced grasp of
new material as well as an appreciation for why it is important.
learning that is integrated within the tasks and reflective of the purposes and complexity of the tasks.
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