'Authentic assessment is assessment that mirrors what it is in the real world we want students to learn. We want students to enact performances that show they have understood and can use what we have taught them at an acceptable level. Just telling us back what we have taught them – typical assessment practice fr a long time – just doesn’t cut it. The practical issues are: to make clear what outcomes we want students to achieve, to design tasks that mirror those outcomes, and to be able to judge what an acceptable level of performance or of understanding is. Thus book is in two parts: the principles of authentic assessment design and their application to a wide range of school subjects.
This is an important work for without properly designed authentic assessment we cannot be really sure if we have successfully taught what we wanted students to learn. And what could be more important than that to a teacher? One of the critical aspects of this form of assessment is designing rubrics or criteria for judging quality of performance: this is handled by Pam Hook using her well known work on the SOLO Taxonomy. Tay Hui Yong and her team are to be congratulated in making the principles so clear and the applications to so many subjects so available to teachers.' - John Biggs, Honorary Professor of Psychology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong