Chapter 4: Subjectivity and Agency in Initial Teacher Education: The Role of Authentic Assessment

Conventionally, authentic assessment entails the design of assessment tasks that link knowledge with the everyday world of life and work, enabling learners to adopt a problem-oriented approach where real-world issues can be addressed in a considered and analytical fashion. In initial teacher education (ITE), authentic assessment can contribute to the development of student–teachers’ knowledge, skills and competence. However, at a deeper level, these tasks can remind student-teachers of their capacity for agency and for challenging the status quo. In evidencing authentic assessment’s role in this process, this chapter focuses on student-educators in a one-year postgraduate ITE programme in Ireland. Framed by Biesta’s domains of education and Dall’Alba’s ways of being, the work analysed a range of assessment submissions. The findings illuminate how student-teachers articulate and wrangle with their present and future selves, integrate ways of knowing, doing and being, and reconcile values and beliefs while accounting for institutional and wider contexts.