Primary School Teachers’ Perceptions of School Report

Year 2016, Special Issue 2016 II, 157 - 172, 01.02.2016

Nida Bayındır , Levent Sevi Aynur Çukurcalıoğlu

https://doi.org/10.17275/per.16.spi.2.16

Abstract

School
report is a document prepared by a teacher to follow up and evaluate a
student’s progress in lessons throughout a certain educational period. It is
also an academic tool that allows the student and parents to be informed about
the progress during that time and to see the shortcomings and to take the
necessary precautions. The main objective of school report is not to show
students’ scores or to determine whether they have passed a lesson, but rather,
to give information about their current state, to manage their skills by taking
their differences into account, to guide them according to their interests,
needs and skills, to determine the difficulties and deficiencies they come up
against throughout the learning process and to help do away with them.  However, if a school report is only
considered in terms of scores and so becomes an indicator of students’ success
or failure, taking the report as a reference, the students whose report shows
them successful might consider themselves more accepted, more important and
valuable. Those with lower academic success, on the other hand, are naturally
driven into a defensive psychology, which causes serious problems because the
report has become the main target and is only assessed in terms of scores. The
fault of parents and teachers to regard school report as an aim to achieve
affects students negatively in many ways and might cause psychological problems
in them in the short term. Perspectives arising
from wrong responses, worries and fears, comparisons, high expectations,
attributing failure to personality, critics without thinking, weathering and
unnecessary rewards or punishments once again reveal the importance of school
report worry. The research aims to reveal how
primary school teachers, the first step of teaching, perceive school report. Teacher’s perception of school report is the variable
playing a fundamental role in shaping both student’s and parents’ definition of
and expectations from school report. The
research encompasses 190 primary school teachers in the city of Kütahya. According to the research results, 62,6% of the
teachers think that school report shows the lessons the students are good at
and 61,6% think that school report shows the lessons the students are deficient
in and their academic progress while 59,5% consider it only as a tool. The
teachers don’t consider school report as a means of punishment and as the
determiner of personality, and they think that it shouldn’t be a source of
honor or shame. The findings show that primary school teachers’ perceptions of
school report are mostly positive in favor of students. In this respect, it can
be said that they perceive school report relevantly to its purpose. Regardless
of the age group of the students, not turning the repot period into a trauma is
based upon not only teachers’ but also parents and students’ perception of
school report. Primary school teachers should reflect their perceptions of
school report to students and parents and should also tell them that school
reports are only a route map involving certain indicators in the early period
and that all students are precious regardless of their reports. As regards to
the school aspect, counsellors should explain the purpose of school report to
teachers, parents and students and should provide the required guidance and
warnings. When media is considered, the traditional school report understanding
should be evaded and by sensitively planning the stress factors of school
report like report festivals, awards and ads, it should be reiterated that
school report is a documentation of students’ mean scores.  With the cooperation between the Directorates
of National Education and Education Faculties, preservice teachers should be
provided such training during theoretical and practical applications of
assessment and evaluation lessons that shows school report as a tool depending
on a process, uses scientific assessment and evaluation arguments, and gives
priority to student psychology and health. Perceptions of students and parents
about school report should be researched. School reports that don’t only
provide quantitative information but also give student success and success
areas prominence should be designed; that is, as well as academic scores,
school reports should also involve student success, areas requiring progress,
parents’ roles in teaching process, what students will/should do at school, statistical
graphs showing previous success levels, in-class success, expected success
levels, thoughts of the teacher, student and parents, study habits, target and
suggestions

Keywords

Primary school teachers, School report, Perception of school report, Assessment and evaluation

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