In my reading I have come across the term ‘Authentic Learning’ quite a bit. It essentially relates to learning that is curiosity and purpose driven, and is meaningful and relevant to the learner. It is basically learning in its purest form, and learning because the learner wants to.


This begs the question though, if we are distinguishing Authentic Learning from current models of in-school learning, then what exactly is the current kind of learning supposed to be? 


Antonyms for ‘authentic’ include ‘inauthentic’ or ‘fake.’ I am not sure I care for the term ‘fake learning’ (though it is possible it may be accurate for some). Instead I am choosing to think of it as Compliance Learning. If Compliance Learning is the opposite of Authentic Learning, then it stands to reason that its characteristics are not those shared by Authentic Learning; It is not driven by curiosity or purpose, and it is not meaningful or relevant and it is not learning because the learner wants to, but because someone else wants them to.


A purely Compliance Learning strategy is demoralizing to students and is an engagement killer. Engagement is one of the critical components to learning, since it is difficult to learn anything without being engaged with it. Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves in their book Five Paths of Student Engagement, as well as Mike Anderson in Tackling the Motivation Crisis discuss their main categories of student engagement. They agree on five:



(As a side note Anderson includes Fun, whereas Shirley & Hargreaves argue that Fun can happen without leading to learning and is often a trap where we equate enjoyment with engagement in learning). 


Tapping into these elements allows us to move away from Compliance-based learning. Generally, Compliance-based learning means that students are not inherently invested in what they are doing, so you are essentially imposing your will on them to comply. This is a huge energy drain on the teacher since there is a lot of time and resources spent on keeping students on task. By comparison, students who are engaged and empowered require much of that same less time and energy from the teacher spent these same tasks because students want to learn and they see value in it. Here the time and energy is spent by teachers on working with students to develop their interests and explore new ideas. For many educators, this is the type of energy that is fuelled by passion which is often energizing more than draining.


Champions of Compliance Learning may feel that because of the prescribed curriculum, Compliance Learning is the proper model to follow since we cannot always choose what we teach. I disagree with this thinking because there is an awful lot of teacher agency in how that prescribed curriculum is explored so we do get to choose how we teach it. I feel it is important that learning be approached in a way that fosters a love of learning rather than treat it as if it is something undesirable but that students have to do it anyway (eg. "we are learning this because it is on the test").  This is also one of the reasons why external rewards fail, in that it signals that the task is undesirable. It may work in the short term, but using these external rewards tends to erode internal motivation in the long run we should avoid them in education wherever possible.


If there is indeed more of a movement towards Authentic Learning, then it assumes that Compliance Learning is the default model (and in traditional models of education I don’t think this assumption is a stretch). Through this lens, some traditional practices begin to make more sense if the focus is on Compliance. For example, I have often heard educators say that we need final exams because if we don’t have them then students will not learn the content. Here, it is believed that the exam gives the learning purpose, rather than the content itself being meaningful. If the purpose is to pass the exam though, then once the purpose is fulfilled, does the learning remain, and, is it relevant to anything else for the student? As a follow up to this question, do we stop learning if we stop testing?


There have been several studies that show that students ‘lose knowledge’ over time. A popular show ‘Are you smarter than a 5th grader’ tested adults with knowledge they learned in 5th grade with many who were unsuccessful in claiming the cash prize. In addition, educators have discussed the ‘summer learning loss’ that happens when students break for the summer. Other studies have shown that students performed up significantly worse on the same assessment when given months later. So what happens to this learning they have 'lost' and is it a reflection of Compliance Learning?


To be fair to defenders of Compliance Learning, even Authentic Learning can be forgotten. As a personal example, there are many songs I learned how to play on guitar that I can no longer recall the chords to. Similarly, there were courses in my degree program I greatly enjoyed and selected because of my interest that I cannot recall the content off the top of my head. So there is a case to be made for ‘use it or lose it’ as well. It would make for an interesting study to determine the differences in retention rates of the two models. It would be equally interesting to see how long it would take to ‘re-learn’ the forgotten content.


In any event, if we are thinking about creating Authentic Learning experiences for students, we need to focus on moving away from Compliance models. This is especially true if we want to give students autonomy in their learning and create real leaders who can develop future-ready job skills. It is extremely difficult to create learners who are creative and critical thinkers when they are simply being expected to comply with directions (which is generally a characteristic of a follower). With an evolving workplace these skills will be prized more than rote compliance. Check a list of future-ready job skills for almost any year in the past few, and you will not find compliance on those lists. There are also some who claim that automation will replace many compliance based tasks in the future, again making compliance less valuable than authentic learning.

Compliance will always be a part of schools since it is part of society. We need people to follow rules and laws or it becomes anarchy. We need students to subscribe to norms (ideally co-constructed ones) in order to have a successful learning environment. However, we also benefit from understanding why these things are in place rather than just blindly following them. There will always be a prescribed curriculum with a set of outcomes and objectives to teach that teachers are expected to follow. But the learning of it does not need a Compliance-focused approach. We should be striving to imbue a love of learning and give them these Authentic learning experiences. Our practices should help to inspire students and have them want to learn more, to be engaged and even empowered in their own learning. If they aren’t, are they even really learning, or are they just going through the motions?