It is important to us, as educators, to get our students to be excited about learning and engaged in learning.
But how do we do it? This is where Authentic Practice comes into play.
So…What is Authentic Practice?
Surrounds the idea that educators provide opportunities and appropriate support for students so they are able to engage in self-directed problem solving, discussion, critical thinking, and reflections in real world contexts (Maina, 2004). Studies have shown that when students are exposed to authentic learning activities, they become more engaged (Maina, 2004) The more authentic a task is, the more a student is likely to show engagement of concepts learnt and are more likely to retain the information (Herrington,). Linking content with student’s real lives, as seen in authentic practice, has shown to create a favorable learning environment for students (Alvermann, Gillis and Phelps, 2013).
Herrington and Herrington’s (2005) highlights of the important characteristics of authentic learning have been adapted in figure 1 below.
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| Figure 1. Adapted from Herrington and Herrington (2005) |
It is evident that we as educators should encourage the adaption of an authentic practice pedagogy in the classroom as it is beneficial in incorporating numeracy and literacy in the curriculum (Kalantzis and Cope, 2016).
Using Authentic Practice in Science to Teach Literacy and Numeracy
“Explore Genetics by Family Traits!” Is an activity by Education.com (n.d) that has been adapted into figure 2. It is a great example of how we as science teachers can use authentic learning to engage students through activities as well as teach the literacy and numeracy aspects of science.
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| Figure 2. Adapted from Education.com (N.D) |
How do we know this task is authentic?
The task includes characteristics outlined in figure 1.
- -The task relevant to the real world through the use of using the family to determine traits.
- Opportunities to collaborate are evident as students must collaborate with family members interviewed to determine answers to the questions.
- Students are encouraged to view physical perspectives from different family members.
- Direction of own learning is taken on by student as they must complete most of the task outside of school.
You may be wondering how the activity “Exploring Genetics Through Family Traits” teaches the literacy and numeracy aspects of science.
A main capability of the Science Curriculum is Questioning and Inquiry skills as stated by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2018). This capability is evident in the above activity as students are required to interview their family members about their physical traits. This develops their questioning and enquiry skills.
Science Literacy skills such as the ability to formulate questions that can be investigated scientifically are developed in this task as students had to ask questions that were later to be interpreted scientifically (ACARA, 2018). As well as this, the literacy aspect of using scientific knowledge to draw conclusions consistent with evidence is developed as students were asked to interpret the data and conclude whether genes were recessive or dominant, through the use of learned scientific knowledge.
As well as this, Scientific Numeracy skills are evident in the task. For example, students were asked to use analyse patterns and trends in data by looking at the results of their findings and determining relationships within their results to reach conclusions (ACARA, 2018). Numeracy skills are also evident when collecting data and inputting them into a table.
It is important that we as teachers adapt authentic learning activities such as the example above to encourage active student engagement in the classroom as well as further develop their literacy and numeracy skills.
