Reflecting on report writing time - How might we maximise the value?

For schools in Australia and many parts of the world, we are heading towards the end of another school term and year. That means report writing season. For the next few weeks, teachers across the country will be huddled in front of computer screens, writing reflections on the progress their learners have made. Mark books will be opened, assessments consulted, work samples will be reviewed. All so that in the first week of the long Summer vacation students can sit and read their report and make plans for how they will enhance their learning in the coming year.

Or at least that is what we hope will happen, but surely few of us actually believe it will.

Reporting is in most systems a significant component of how we provide feedback on the learning that has occurred. It occupies a great deal of time, energy and mental space in the annual schedule of most teachers. Each school has their way of doing it. There are some consistent elements which have persisted over time. Most use some form of grading system. Most include a teacher comment either on the child holistically or broken out by disciplines or both. There are some progressive elements appearing such as comments or tick boxes which share perceptions of learner dispositions and mindset. We report on academics and social & emotional learning. There is an inevitable time crunch as deadlines loom, and in the final weeks of term, we transform from educators to editors.

Fortunately, or surprisingly, we don’t ask ‘why’ we do this all that often.

Surely the goal with reporting is to provide the learner, their parents and their future teachers with information about where they got to with their learning. To an extent, reporting achieves at least parts of this. Once they decode the teacher speak, parents gain some idea of what their child learned and perhaps what they are yet to master. They may have an idea of where their child sits in comparison to their peers. They may be able to see growth from one year to the next. Dig beneath the surface, and you might find that some of the details are a little vague. This is inevitable given the complexity of learning, contemporary curriculums and the subtle nature of an individual’s personal growth over time. To capture all that occurred throughout a semester of learning would require a much longer document or maybe a short film (think short like Ben Hur). If the following year’s teacher reads the reports, they too will have some idea of what the child learned. Again the limitations of the reporting process hinder the utility of this information and a good conversation with the previous teacher is generally considered of greater utility.

This leaves the learner, the person at the centre of all this effort. What purposes for the learner does the report serve?

Sadly, the truth is not much. After all they were there for the whole journey. They experienced the successes and the failures. They sat wondering what the teacher was on about. They sought to understand the new concepts, answered questions, completed tasks, collaborated with their classmates. They possibly read and maybe even wrote down countless learning objectives. They received marks, grades and feedback. They sat with their teacher and listened to feedback, asked questions and sought help. The report to them is like a postcard from a vacation. Nice to share with someone else, but, “you should’ve been there”.

As a form of feedback, which surely they are, reports are pretty ordinary.

In a study which considered evidence from well-designed studies conducted over a ninety-year period, Kluger and DeNisi (1996) found that feedback actually made performance worse in 38% of the studies. What this study and others like it reveal is that the manner in which most feedback is provided is at best of little value to most learners and at it’s worst is damaging. This points to a need to alter how we provide feedback. Lipnevich & Smith (2008) report that “Detailed feedback specific to individual work was found to be strongly related to student improvement in essay scores, with the influence of grades and praise more complex. Overall, detailed, descriptive feedback was found to be most effective when given alone, unaccompanied by grades or praise.” Further, research by Pulfrey, Buchs, and Butera (2011) show that “grades and grades accompanied by comments incited equally lower levels of intrinsic motivation”.

In this video, Dylan Wiliam describes what makes feedback effective. It is noteworthy that the largest impact on learning is feedback provided to the student in the moment. While the learning is taking place, while the learner has opportunity to integrate advice and take immediate action is the ideal time to provide feedback. It seems vital that we understand this. Wiliam makes this point well using the analogy of driving by looking through the windscreen or the rearview mirror. Traditional feedback is like looking through the rearview mirror at where you have been. Effective feedback shows you the view ahead, where you are going, and how you will get there. It is about action on reflection.

We should be honest then with the way that we perceive reporting and consider what actions we might take alongside what our systems and parent bodies require from us. What dialogue might we have with learners as we conclude our year of learning with them that will allow them to build on what we have achieved? How do we encourage them to reflect on the learning journey they have had and then cast their mind forward to the actions they are yet to take? How do we communicate this to their parents and their future teachers? While we as teachers are engaged in this extensive process of reflecting on our learners' learning seems like the perfect opportunity to invite them into the dialogue. Doing so might make the whole reporting process somewhat more valuable for all, but especially to whom it should matter the most.

By Nigel Coutts


Anastasiya A. Lipnevich. & Jeffrey K. Smith. (2008) Response to Assessment Feedback: The Effects of Grades, Praise, and Source of Information. Educational Testing Service

Caroline Pulfrey, Ce ́line Buchs, and Fabrizio Butera (2011) Why grades engender performance-avoidancegoals: The mediating role of autonomous motivation. Journal of Educational Psycholog; Vol. 103, No. 3, 683–700

Kluger, A. N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254–284