ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a qualitative study that attempts to identify those foreign language assessment practices that comply with feminist pedagogy. The study was carried out at a major Canadian research university employing autoethnographic and case study approaches. The analysis of instructor interview data, as well as the researcher’s teaching journal, reveals that graded summative assessment violates the main principles of feminist pedagogy. The study results suggest that peer and self-assessment, formative feedback, and complete/incomplete grading options diminish student competition, reduce the power imbalance between students and teachers, and improve teaching and learning in agreement with feminist pedagogy. Suggestions are provided for reconceptualizing assessment practices to align them with feminist pedagogy and to assist educators in creating a collaborative classroom with democratic relationships between teachers and students. These suggestions may be especially important for beginning language courses because of their potential to encourage students to continue with the foreign language beyond the first year.
