Helgesen, M., & Jacobs,
G. (2003). A response to last issue’s IMHO on competition vs. cooperation.
The English Teachers in
We
read with great interest the IMHO (In My Honest Opinion) piece by Michael Guest
on Competition and cooperation in the
classroom in the Summer 2002 issue of ETJ
Journal. This is an issue of
personal and professional interest to both of us. George, for instance, edits
the newsletter of the International Association for the Study of Cooperation in
Education (www.iasce.net)
and was a featured speaker talking on cooperative learning at last year’s JALT
conference. Marc does a lot of work with materials development and is
interested in the ways students interact.
We
thought the article does a nice job of presenting a balanced view of both
objections to and potential benefits of the use of competition in teaching, and
we agree with the point that competition and cooperation are not diametrical
opposites. What we have done below is to, first, respond to one of the points
made and then, to get to our main reason for writing, we have added to Mike
Guest’s list of ideas for balancing competition and cooperation.
Mike
writes that, “[C]ompetitive activities are goal-directed, with an obvious task
and clear ends.” We would suggest that, as essential as this is, it is more a
description of (good) tasked based learning and competition, per se. What Mike
seems to be describing are task-based activities that can have competitive,
cooperative, or individualistic goal structures. (For more on goal structure,
see the chapter by David and Roger Johnson in Kluge, McGuire, Johnson, &
Johnson [1999].) Competition does add another end, but cooperation does as
well. Cooperation is more than “leaving out the rivalry.” It is adding a spirit
of teamwork and sharing. Not that we not talking about a politically correct
“it’s nice to be nice” concept (although few would argue that that isn’t a bad
starting point.) Cooperative learning is a very practical way to help learners
work together.
1. Rather than competing
against others, students can compete against a standard or against a problem.
Just like a relay team works hard to beat their own best time, so too can a
group or class study hard to beat their previous score or to develop ideas to
overcome a problem. These can be major issues, such as the environment, sexual
harassment, or less crucial tasks such as designing a tour of the learner’s
area for visiting an English speaker or even brainstorming vocabulary related
to a given topic.
Activities like this naturally lead into a chance
for various groups to join other groups to share what they’ve come up with, a
step which increases the quantity of English they are using.
2. Cooperation and competition
can be not just part of the how (the
method) of learning, but also part of the what
(the content). For instance, students can study about the way that
organisms cooperate with one another within and across species (
3. Criterion-referenced
assessment rather than norm-referenced assessment is recommended as a way of
providing clear ends yet discouraging competition among students.
4. How students react to
competition depends in part on the overall climate of the classroom, school,
and society. We teachers can do a great deal to encourage an overall
cooperative climate in the classroom, and we also have roles to play in the
school and society. Here are a few ways to encourage such a climate in the
classroom:
a. Use warm-up activities that
build familiarity and trust. (See http://www.mgu.ac.jp/~ic/helgesen/physical/physical_-prehtml.htm
for examples.) These are also known as team-building and class-building
activities.
b. Promote service learning
activities in which students help others beyond their classroom (Kinsley &
McPherson, 1995).
c. Use activities that tap a variety of intelligences (Gardner, 1999), such as adding music, drawing, and role playing, so that students who are more proficient than average at English see the talents of their less proficient peers and the benefits of collaborating with them.
d. Change competitive games into cooperative ones. The same game that works well competitively can work even better cooperatively. One way to convert a competitive game to cooperative is by just not keeping score. For instance, in the vocabulary review game Slap, students put a number of word cards face up on a desk. One person gives a hint and the others try to be the first to find and touch the card with the word that corresponds to the hint. The "regular" way to do it is for a person to get a point every time s/he get to the word first. Instead of doing that, the student who guesses a given word gives the next hint. Thus, students are working/playing together. No one wins or loses.
e. Mike Guest points out that
no one should be forced to compete. How about giving students a choice? After
setting up an activity, we can say, “There are two ways to do this. If you want
to do it as a contest, count the points (etc.). Or, if you don’t want it to be
a contest, that’s fine. Don’t bother with points. Just do the task.” For
teachers who haven’t consciously tried cooperative learning activities, this
might be a good way to get your feet wet. (Marc’s note – I remember the first
time I tried this. I was shocked when 100% of the class opted for no
competition.).
As is clear, our bias is toward cooperation being the
dominant but not exclusive mode of classroom interaction. Dickinson Chan, a
primary school English teacher in
Gardner,
H. (1999). Intelligence reframed:
Multiple intelligences for the 21st century.
Guest,
(2002). In my humble opinion: Competition
and cooperation in the classroom. The ETJ Journal, 3(2). 25-26.
Jacobs,
G. M., Power, M. A., & Loh, W.
Kinsley,
C. W., & McPherson, K. (Eds.). (1995). Enriching
the curriculum through service
learning.
Kluge, D., McGuire, S., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson,
R. T. (Eds.). (1999). Cooperative
learning.
George
Jacobs (www.georgejacobs.net) lives in
Marc
Helgesen(http://www.mgu.ac.jp/~ic/helgesen/Helgesen.front.htm
) lives in