Authenticity lies in two realms of the learning experience. First, the STEM question must be relevant to teachers and learners. If the question doesn't engage the learners, the learning will be one of obligation, not passion and interest. Second, authenticity is reflected in the types of tasks students need to do; are the tasks relevant only to a school setting, or can they transferred to other facets of their lives? The tasks students engage in should prepare them to navigate their community.
In order to embark on a STEM journey, students must tackle authentic goals. Just like in real life, those goals are reached through a series of steps, guided by feedback and dictated by checkpoints and deadlines. This authentic practice increases motivation (Newman, Dantzler, & Coleman 2015) and prepares students to enter the global community as adults with critical thinking, project planning, and cooperating skills. As the National Research Council stated in their 2011 report, “Effective [STEM] instruction capitalizes on students’ early interest and experiences, identifies and builds on what they know, and provides them with experiences to engage them in the practices of science and sustain their interest” (p. 18). Students will engage at deeper levels in the classrooms, and a wider variety of learners will buy in to the learning experience if the teacher establishes the relevance of the learning exercise and the students can see the "why" of their problem (Vasquez, Sneider, & Comer 2013). Through this process, students investigate interesting questions and construct their knowledge based on their experiences. Their experience follows an engineering cycle, where learning takes place in iterations, improved and built upon by feedback, just like many task-based jobs in adulthood (Juliani 2018).
Using Project-Based learning (PBL) as a pedagogy to facilitate STEM learning encourages authenticity. First, the driving question developed to guide the PBL is grounded in a community need, or a question relevant to students. Through this driving question, teachers and students can frame the experience and work through it for a sustained period of time (Toolin 2004). There are four ways to interpret authenticity when developing STEM learning experiences; context, tasks, impact on their world, and personal authenticity as applied to students interests/concerns (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss 2015). For instance, the context of the project could be authentic, in that it provides a connection between the learning community and the broader community. Second, the tasks within the learning experience can be "rich:" managing project activities such as tasks, schedules, checkpoints, and deadlines is similar to business world. (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss 2015). The outcomes of this relevant work can be seen in real world change: Service learning as a component of STEM PBL makes the authenticity come to life as students determine how to impact their communities and assess their effects (Newman, Dantzler, & Coleman 2015). Last, part of the issue of authenticity is developing those skills necessary in completing adult tasks; challenge, perseverance, and self-control. The challenge of the question in PBL is vital to holding the experience together; it can be accessible, but not too easy, and challenging, but not too difficult. To address this challenge, students must engage in sustained inquiry ("Scientists Persevere," Hoffer 2016 p. 21), using perseverance skills to really dig down and solve their question. As they address their challenges in this authentic way, they generate knowledge and understandings they can use into the future (Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss 2015).