How Does Competition Affect Student Learning?

In my previous post, on August 25, we examined ways of “keeping kids in school”. As a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent I took this as a personal mandate. So today, when I found some interesting research published by ASCD on their Research Brief webpage, I hoped to spark some dialogue.

Dan Laitsch, in his article Competition and Student Learning, asks the question: “How does competition affect student learning?” Let us put it another way: Does competition “push out” or “pull” students into the learning process?

Laitsch’s bottom line stated: “Using a behavioral-economic model, the researchers found support for the concept that competition between students may have a negative effect on student motivation as students attempt to protect their own perceived self-worth.”

In his writing Laitsch made reference to, Metacognition and the Self-System, an article by Kavita Seeratan, a member of the Learning Disabilities Resource Community from University of Toronto.

Seeratan states: “faced with a challenging intellectual task, the student who believes he has the capabilities to perform it effectively will be more likely to undertake it and to persist at the task than will the student who has doubts about his ability to perform it successfully”. Her final premise: “In order for the metacognitive systems to work properly, children must have adequate information about both strategic knowledge and metacognitive activity. Hence, positive attributions or high motivation to succeed would be of little use to an individual who does not have the necessary accompanying strategic knowledge and metacognitive skills. But in the presence of strategic knowledge and metacognitive skills, motivation and affective states are very advantageous in promoting progress towards self-determination.”

http://www.ldrc.ca/contents/view_article/157/

A couple of questions come to mind: Would a “competition strategy” be a successful motivator in the presence of strategic knowledge, metacognitive skills and students belief in their ability to perform successfully? Wow, and if so, how do we do that in our classrooms?