The basis of my rather critical understanding of ‘Authentic Learning’ and by extension the pedagogy at the crux of it encourages one to ‘learn by doing.’ With this as my premise, I dug a little on the questions and debates on authentic learning. That led me back to a page in newlearningonline.com. While the course analyzed authentic pedagogy by dissecting the various dimensions, be it discursive, intersubjective, socio-cultural or moral, these were a few of my observations.

Learning is based on what happens in the real world and is an attempt to equip the learner to face the real world. And it is because of that, that learning that happens in the ‘authentic’ way is more often than not focused on one thing and one thing only, but rather a combination of many (dare I call it interdisciplinary). But, another thing that one must make note of is that when learning happens, it is through an exploratory process that is based on disciplined inquiry. This being the gist of my understanding with that niggling thought, ‘Authentic pedagogy sounds better than didactic on paper, but isn’t it reinforcing societal norms – I mean when it started boys were encouraged to do maths and sciences but girls were nudged towards home science, right?’ kept on going in a loop inside my head.

Given that we’ve come a long way since then, the discussion in ‘Kalantzis and Cope, Debating Authentic Pedagogy’ it takes a tone of greater raging debate. The first question is the academic outcome of Authentic literacy pedagogy, and I am going to concentrate on that. Given that authentic pedagogy is more focused on meaning-making and understanding of the content in context and goes beyond mere reproduction of prior knowledge through the means of dialogue, authentic pedagogy takes the value of learning beyond the walls of the classroom. All said and done, the question of how to consider and assess or evaluate the ‘instruction’, ‘assessment tasks’ and ‘student work’ still remains, especially when you consider the Annual Exams and the State mandated ‘Board exams’ which the students have to pass to go to the next grade.

In this scenario, if at all the students and the institution have taken the authentic approach, how will it work? Can schools actually take this approach? Will it work in a real-world setting (beyond what’s on paper)? The answer may differ on various factors including but not just exclusively on the knowledge and competence of the teachers and the facilities of the institutions, coupled with the exposure the students have. This is discussed in great detail in the paper, ‘Authentic Pedagogy: Its Presence in Social Studies Classrooms and Relationship to Student Performance on State-Mandated Tests.’

References:

Newmann, F., Marks, H., & Gamoran, A. (1996). Authentic Pedagogy and Student Performance. American Journal of Education, 104(4), 280-312. Retrieved April 11, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/1085433

Saye, J., & Social Studies Inquiry Research Collaborative (SSIRC). (2013). Authentic pedagogy: Its presence in social studies classrooms and relationship to student performance on state-mandated tests. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41(1), 89-132.

Kalantzis and Cope, Debating Authentic Pedagogy - New Learning Online. (n.d.). Retrieved April 11, 2020, from newlearningonline.com website: https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-5/kalantzis-and-cope-debating-authentic-pedagogy