Authentic Assessment, Teacher Judgment and Moderation in a Context of High Accountability

Abstract

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, the use of authentic assessment as a school-based assessment has become increasingly important in various educational systems that are working towards realigning their desired educational outcomes to meet twenty-first century skills and competencies. Using clearly stated success criteria and standards in authentic assessment has enabled the practices of assessment for learning to occur in daily classroom instruction. One of the key conditions for using school-based authentic assessments as an effective leverage point in education reform is that teachers need to possess not only a high level of assessment literacy, but also additional agency and autonomy in their roles as competent assessors and moderators of the quality of students’ work. This chapter uses the country of Singapore to illustrate how teachers need additional agency and autonomy in their professional judgment of students’ work, if the enabling power of school-based authentic assessments is to be used to promote student learning of twenty-first century skills and competencies in a high-accountability context. Some recommendations for teacher professional development in using assessment criteria and standards to judge the quality of students’ work through social moderation practice are also discussed.