Authentic Assessment Design in Accounting Courses: A Literature Review

Aim/Purpose: [This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the 2018 issue of the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 15] Authentic assessments offer students the opportunity to develop skills that implement the formal learning they receive in the classroom. Although there is a need for accounting graduates to possess a plethora of skills to equip them for success, there is a shortage of literature which focuses on authentic assessment design for accounting courses. This paper aims to address this gap by compiling a toolkit for accounting educators aspiring to design and implement authentic assessments Background: This paper reviews examples of authentic assessments that are available and have been used by accounting educators and educators in general. It highlights the skills that might be developed with each assessment Methodology: A review of literature on authentic assessment design and examples of authentic assessments like portfolios, reflective journals, presentations, reports peer and self-assessment was conducted. Contribution: This paper aims to address this gap by compiling a toolkit for accounting educators aspiring to design and implement authentic assessments. Findings: Authentic assessments are a form of learning. They help graduates develop skills and attribute that will make them work-ready and capable of handling a lot of real life practical work situations. Recommendations for Practitioners: Accounting educators may find guidelines in this paper which will help them understand authentic assessments and enlighten them on the challenges they may encounter when implementing the assessments Recommendation for Researchers: There is a need for future researchers to contribute more to this topic so as to increase the variety and amount of literature available for those wishing to engage with authentic curriculum design in accounting. Impact on Society: This paper may also be of use to prospective employers wishing to gain a clear understanding of the skills inherent in prospective graduates who may have been exposed to authentic assessments. Accounting students and graduates may find this paper useful as it will help them comprehend the importance of some the assessments with the backing and assurance from the literature. Future Research: Future research may focus on the challenges in implementing authentic assessments. It would also be great to see more research addressing the perceptions of educators towards authentic assessments.

Authentic Assessment Design in Accounting Courses: A Literature Review

Aim/Purpose: Authentic assessments offer students the opportunity to develop skills that implement the formal learning they receive in the classroom. Although there is a need for accounting graduates to possess a plethora of skills to equip them for success, there is a shortage of literature that focuses on authentic assessment design for accounting courses. This paper aims to address this gap by compiling a toolkit for accounting educators aspiring to design and implement authentic assessments. Background: This paper reviews examples of authentic assessments that are available and have been used by accounting educators and educators in general. It highlights the skills that might be developed with each assessment Methodology: A review of 182 articles on authentic assessment design and examples of authentic assessments like portfolios, reflective journals, presentations, reports, peer and self-assessment was conducted. Contribution: A toolkit with examples of authentic assessment to ease the task of authentic assessment design for those new to authentic assessment and seasoned authentic assessment practitioners alike. Findings: Authentic assessments are a form of learning. They help graduates develop skills and attributes that will make them work-ready and capable of handling a lot of real life practical work situations. Rubrics are an important part of authentic assessment implementation and their use is mandated by business school accrediting bodies like AACSB. Recommendations for Practitioners: Accounting educators may find guidelines in this paper which will help them understand authentic assessments and enlighten them on the challenges they may encounter when implementing the assessments. Recommendation for Researchers: There is a need for future researchers to contribute more to this topic so as to increase the variety and amount of literature available for those wishing to engage with authentic curriculum design in accounting. Future researchers could also focus on the perceptions of authentic assessments of accounting educators, students and employers. Impact on Society: This paper may also be of use to prospective employers wishing to gain a clear understanding of the skills inherent in prospective graduates who may have been exposed to authentic assessments. Accounting students and graduates may find this paper useful as it will help them comprehend the importance of some the assessments with the backing and assurance from the literature. Future Research: Future research may focus on the challenges in implementing authentic assessments. It would also be great to see more research addressing the perceptions of educators towards authentic assessments.

Where Are the History Books for Palestinian Children?

Colonialism deprives colonised peoples of the self-determined histories needed for continued struggle. Scattered since 1948 across diverse educational systems, Palestinians have been unable to control their education or construct an authentic curriculum. This paper covers varied schooling in the Palestinian diaspora. I set this state of ‘splitting through education’ as contradictory to international declarations of the right of colonised peoples to culturally relevant education. Such education would include histories that explain their situation, and depict past resistances. I argue for the production of histories of Palestine for Palestinian children, especially those in refugee camps as well as in Israel and Jerusalem, where curricula are controlled by the settler-coloniser. Black and Native Americans have dealt with exclusion from history in ways that offer models for Palestinians.

Authenticity in Education

Authenticity is a concept with an impressive history in Western philosophy and a significant hold on the modern imagination. Inseparable from conceptions of truth and individual fulfillment, authenticity remains a powerful ideal, even as it eludes precise definition. Recently it has also become an organizing principle for many educational initiatives. Education, like authenticity, is opposed to dissimulation, ignorance, manipulation, and related states of misalignment between truth and experience. There is widespread enthusiasm for the promotion of authenticity across different types of education and in the personal identity of educators and students. Most of the scholarly literature pertaining to authenticity in education falls outside the scope of philosophical inquiry. But in all cases, the pursuit of authenticity in education rests on various philosophical assumptions about the nature of truth, reality, ethics, and, ultimately, the aims of education. With the influence of Dewey and 20th-century progressive movements in education, authenticity entered the vernacular of educational theory and practice. Attention to the relationship between learning environments and the “real” world has generated pervasive commitments to authentic learning, authentic pedagogies, authentic curriculum, and authentic assessment practices. Here, “authenticity” is used to track the verisimilitude of an educational practice with respect to some external reality. It constitutes an ontological claim about levels of “reality,” as well as an epistemological attitude toward learning as the construction of knowledge. In this respect, authenticity intersects debates about constructivism and relativism in education. Likewise, teachers are exhorted to be authentic qua teachers, elevating their true selves above institutional anonymity as a key part of effective teaching. This phenomenon trades on the values of truthfulness and autonomy that are prized in Western modernity but also problematized in the personal identity and ethics literature. The authenticity of students has also been championed as an educational aim, even as the methods for eliciting authenticity in others have been criticized as self-defeating or culturally limiting. Personal authenticity stands in a contested relationship to autonomy, which has been promoted as the key aim of liberal education. The project of creating authentic people through education remains an intense site of research and debate, with important implications for educational ethics and liberal values.