Book Review: Transforming Assessment

Transformative Assessment by W. James Popham is written for an educational audience, but has much to offer for the human resource or training and development professional. The book deals with formative assessment in education. It explains the research on formative assessment and how to build a framework for instruction based on assessment. However, given the dearth of writings on formative assessment in training, there is much that can be gleaned from the pages of his book. Perhaps the most important lesson is that assessment can be a mechanism for transformation. I also highly recommend his Chapter 7 on the limitations of formative assessment. Overall, an excellent resource book for the classroom teacher that also has a lot to offer in terms of new ideas for the training professional.