From profiles to rich tasks : the situated nature of 'authenticity' in the context of reforming curriculum and assessment practices

Outcome based education that has dominated Australian education in the 1990s is under review in the early years of the twenty first century. The available historical 'texts' produced during the first half of the 1990s, which include the national Statements and Profiles, and the state Curriculum and Standards Frameworks, provide us with documents that we can engage with not simply for 'history's sake', but with an opportunity to, in the words of the feminist author Dorothy Smith, 'displace[s] the analysis from the text as originating in writer or thinker, to the discourse itself as an ongoing intertextual process' bringing into view the social relations in which texts are embedded and which they organise' (1990, p. 161-2). Most Australian states and territories have now commenced significant situated, local curriculum renewal and reform. This renewed interest in curriculum offers insights into the character of recent assessment practices in Australia, recognising the tensions inherent in assessment practices and authentic assessment models. This paper explores, by way of an overview of the broad curriculum and assessment practices adopted in Australia over the past twenty-five years, the situated nature of 'authenticity' in the context of curriculum and assessment practices and how as teacher educators we are responding through our everyday work.