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AUTHENTIC INTELLECTUAL WORK

Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) is a construct developed by Dr. Fred Newmann from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It focuses on authenticity in instruction, creation of assessment tasks, and the scoring of the student work that comes from the tasks. Fred Newmann and his colleagues (Newmann, & Associates, 1996, Newmann, Lopez, & Bryk, 1998; Newmann, F.M. & Wehlage, G.G. 1995; Newmann, F.M., Secada, W.G. & Wehlage, G.G. 1995) conducted research in Chicago elementary and middle schools and examined students' opportunities to construct knowledge, communicate clearly and well, do work with authentic purposes, and use language and mathematics conventions accurately and effectively.

According to Newmann, "Our research at the Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools (CORS) proposed a conception of high quality intellectual work that could be used to evaluate the level of intellectual quality of diverse curricula, assessments, and student work products without taking a stand on the specific content that ought to be learned. … We called such intellectual work "authentic" because it requires high-level cognitive performance (i.e., rigorous, in-depth understanding instead of only superficial acquaintance with memorized bits of knowledge) and it results in personally, aesthetically or socially useful products and services, instead of completed exercises that were contrived only for the purpose showing of competence or to please teachers.

We articulated three broad criteria for authentic intellectual work:

• Construction of Knowledge: using or manipulating knowledge as in analysis, interpretation, synthesis, and evaluation, rather than only reproducing knowledge in previously stated forms.
• Disciplined Inquiry: gaining in-depth understanding of limited topics, rather than superficial acquaintance with many, and using elaborated forms of communication to learn and to express one's conclusions.
• Value Beyond School: the production of discourse, products, and performances that have personal, aesthetic, or social significance beyond demonstration of success to a teacher." (Newmann, F. M. Authentic Intellectual Work: What and Why?)

Their work suggests that assignments that demand higher-order thinking skills, deep understanding of content, elaborated communication, and activities that are similar to real-world tasks elicit work that is intellectually more complex from students. Measuring student achievement through the collection of actual student work, as opposed to reliance on state standardized tests, provides us with an authentic measure of student achievement and intellectual ability. The evaluation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation … is also analyzing student work and teacher assignments using a modified AIW rubric (see Rigor, Relevance, and Results, 2006).

References

Newmann, F.M. & Associates (1996). Authentic achievement: Restructuring schools for intellectual quality. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Newmann, F.M., Lopez, G. & Bryk, A.S. (1998). The quality of intellectual work in Chicago schools: A baseline report. Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Newmann, F.M., Secada, W.G. & Wehlage, G.G. (1995). A guide to authentic instruction and assessment: Vision, standards and scoring. Madison, WI: Document Service, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Newmann, F.M. & Wehlage, G.G. (1995). Successful school restructuring: A report to the public and educators. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center on Education Research.