Competition in the Learning Environment

Competition has increasingly become integrated in schools around the world. Today, teachers use competition as a tool to help students learn faster and more effectively. Some students struggle with the pressure of competing with their peers, but several advantages can be taken from the competitive environment. A competitive setting has an overall positive impact; however, competition starts to hurt students when they only focus on the end result.

Competition is a common part of life outside of school. “Some argue that competition in the classroom will prepare students for competition in their lives beyond school". If children are not taught to be competitive, then they will be unprepared for the challenging tasks of the outside world such as when applying for jobs or colleges.

Competition can help keep students interested in school assignments. It can “potentially increase the level of fun and/or drama in an activity". Competitions add some thrill to tasks that would otherwise keep students disinterested if not placed in that setting. Competitions keep students focused on the task at hand and motivated to succeed. The more at stake in the competition, the more competent the students will become.

In group competitions, individuals come together to work as a team and cooperate with each other to reach a common goal. According to John Shindler in the Transformative Classroom Management, group competition “Can provide a dimension that potentially reinforces group interdependence and/or team skills”. Students can learn to work together more efficiently when they are working toward a common goal. Group competitions are also a “healthy” form of competition. “Competition between groups (using a team-based approach) may increase cooperation within groups”. In a case study performed by Ivan Cantadore and Jose M. Conde, seventy-seven students were split into small groups of four to six members each. The groups had two tasks to complete over the course of four weeks which involved creating multiple choice problems and answering other group's questions and evaluating them. Afterwards, a questionnaire was filled out by all of the participating students. 94% of the students stated that working in small groups helped them solve their individual doubts. Also, 71% stated that the cooperative environment was beneficial for the learning process. The study used some of the tools of a healthy competition: “rewards were symbolic, competition was performed in a short amount of time, and all participants had an equal chance of winning”. The results of the study show that the students were able to cooperate well with each other and remained focused on learning the material. This shows that group competition is a more favorable environment compared to individual work.

Competition becomes a problem when students switch their focus to winning or losing instead of learning and understanding the purpose of a task. The learning experience is hindered when students lose focus of the task at hand. Students who continuously win will stop trying from developing a cocky attitude. These students credit their success to talent alone and see no reason to try in class, eventually losing interest in all assignments. They do not see how they could improve and will put in the least amount of effort possible because they know that they are the best in the class. At the same time, "If the same students lose over and over despite their best efforts, they may come to see the world as unfair and are likely to give up when faced with challenging academic task". When students continue to fail, they believe that they should not even try. They focus on comparing their abilities to other students rather than focusing on the main goal of the assignment and effort put in to complete it. Their failure in classroom competition transfers to other noncompetitive academic tasks as well, making them shy away from all work. These students may judge themselves too harshly, leading to a lower self-esteem, and repel other students since they are seen as the “losers".

There are also students who never put in the effort to compete. In a study done by Henry Wang and Bill Yang, some students purposefully do not try, but not from giving up, “to win by not losing- in other words, to fail because of low effort rather than low ability”. These students reduce their effort in order to avoid lowering their self-worth and avoid the pain of losing. They fear the thought of losing so much that they do not even want to apply themselves to see what would happen if they actually did.

Competition largely helps students stay on task, engaged, and productive, but the negative impact of competition comes when students concentrate only on the consequences. Competition in the classroom cannot be helped since more and more teachers are taking advantage of the benefits of competition.