ABSTRACT
AUTHENTICITY HAS PLAYED an important rhetorical role in educational reforms and debates for most of this century. It has often offered a theoretical basis from which to critique the ideas of others and to launch one’s own pedagogical innovations. Progressivism in education may have first created the theoretical space in which the desideratum of authenticity could arise, but, in this chapter, I wish to explore a parallel history of the construct, for if the progressivist value of authenticity emits a kind of low-level radiation that infuses educational theory, it is contemporary psychology that brings issues of authenticity into relief in a more rigorous way. This permits the trope of authenticity to set aside its merely rhetorical role and take on a social scientifically viable dimension.
