Assessment of Twenty-First Century Skills: The Issue of Authenticity

Writing skills are assessed through writing tests, typing skills are assessed through typing; how do we assess critical thinking or collaboration? As interest in twenty-first century skills increases globally, and as skills goals are explicitly adopted into curricula, the inadequacy of our knowledge of how these skills develop becomes increasingly problematic. These goals reflect human processes, both cognitive and social, and this challenges many current assessment approaches. To highlight some of the issues associated with assessment of twenty-first century skills, a review of a sample of assessment tools was undertaken. The review provides some insights both into how far we have come as well as how far we have to go. The diversity of the tools and evaluation of these against authenticity dimensions highlights the challenges not only in design of assessment but in how teachers might design classroom learning experiences that facilitate development of twenty-first century skills.