ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in greater depth the ways in which discourse and practice were influenced – though by no means always determined – by assessment regimes in individuals' different universities and so gives further evidence of the significance of institutional contexts in profoundly shaping practice around student writing. Robert coined a vivid phrase in a draft of a departmental newsletter to describe what he saw as the strongly negative impact of formal assessment in his context, calling it "the tyranny of assessment" and the "tyranny of the pink sheet". A key preoccupation for many of the fourteen study participants was that of ensuring fairness in the assessment of writing. Transparency was a key concern for some participants at the outset of the assessment cycle, for example, in setting out expectations for students in the form of detailed criteria. In Dan's context, students names are given on assessed coursework at all levels.
