Assessing Writing 9 (2005) 208–238 Community-based assessment pedagogy Asao B. Inoue * Washington State University, c/o 1710 NW Valhalla Dr. Pullman, WA 99163, USA Available online 9 January 2005 Abstract This article attempts to structure student assessment practices in the classroom. Informed by fourth generation evaluation, it discusses a pedagogy based on a recursive framework of writing, assessment, and reflection activities that move students toward productive praxis. Implemented over three semesters at a land grant university in the U.S., this pedagogy moves away from teacher-centered assessment and evaluation of student writing, and pushes students to do these things for themselves. It promotes a classroom in which students take control of all writing assignments, their instructions, assessment criteria, and the practices and reflective activities that go along with their writing. It encourages a community of writers that are implicated in each others’ writing and assessment practices, and gets them to critically engage with these practices. The article offers theoretical justifications and qualitative data from three semesters and suggests conclusions based on them. © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Assessment; Pedagogy; Peer-review; Evaluation; Rubrics; Reflection Like a sliver under the skin, my grading and assessment of student writing has always bothered me. Often I’d leave a student conference or the grading of a paper feeling unsatisfied with my strategies, knowing that the student will not hear the good in my comments, only see the disappointing grade. And that grade will overdetermine not only how that student understands her writing in my class, but our relationship and her ability to grow as a writer. The pedagogical advice I got in grad school to “just get them to write and write a lot” doesn’t work most of the time. The problem lies, as I have come to see it, in the fact that my past students weren’t a part of the assessment process at all. They didn’t contribute to the creation of * Tel.: +1 509 332 6684. E-mail addresses: ainoue@wsu.edu, asao@inoueweb.com (A.B. Inoue). 1075-2935/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.asw.2004.12.001