For my inquiry synthesis, I have created an infographic that encompasses the main ideas of my inquiry question, process, and findings. Enjoy!
Positive Competition Infographic
March 2016
Self-Confidence
Goldberg, A. (2015) Self-confidence. Competitive Edge. Retrieved from https://www.competitivedge.com/self-confidence
Confidence is a difficult thing to build. It takes time and effort. Particularly effort. And lots of it. As a participant, there are many things you can do to build confidence and many credos surrounding it.
- Nothing replaces hard work
- Remind yourself of yourself
- Don’t compare yourself to others – Focus on you
- Focus on what you can control
- Dwell on the positive
- Catch yourself doing things right
- Be a good coach to yourself
As an educator, something that has become increasingly obvious to me is the notion of no matter what you do, you’re impacting a student’s confidence. Every single interaction influences confidence; whether it’s a look, tone, comment, or your body language, the students are watching and they care what you do. This is so important to keep in mind in a classroom and isn’t limited to just competitive activities. Students self confidence can be extremely fragile and as the adult in the room, it lies on your shoulder to model how to have self confidence. This is a very difficult task as we as educators aren’t handed bag of self-confidence as a resource and told “go forth and spread the good worth of self-efficacy”, handing out confidence from our confidence bag to those in need. Tough as it is though to bring confidence into the classroom, it is necessary thing and I will refer back to the credos at the beginning for inspiration. They are solid principles to build self-confidence from and if you can, you will set your student sup for success in self-confidence as well. To relate this back to competition though, these credos are the definitions of a good competitor. Self-confidence will feed to positive elements of competition and thus will support further growth of confidence. It is a cycle that, if possible to implement, can have a tremendous influence on an individual’s life.
Confidence and Performance
Skinner, B. R. (2013) The relationship between confidence and performance throughout a competitive season. All Graduate Plan B and other Reports. Paper 285. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1284&context=gradreports
When looking at sports, it is obvious immediately that sports is competitive. It’s working against others to achieve a task first. This is undeniable. Additionally, it has been discussed at length about how sports can be detrimental to an individual’s confidence. However, what is rarely discussed is how sports can have a hugely positive impact on a child’s confidence.
When looking at confidence’s influence in sports, it can be separated into two categories; traits confidence and state confidence. Traits confidence refers to a long-standing disposition that an athlete (or student) exhibits in a competitive task. This is more permanent character trait and make difficult to alter. A state confidence refers to the athlete or students mind frame “in the moment”. This can shift wildly and many influences can shift an athlete or student’s confidence during a task. A coach or teacher NEEDS to keep both of these in mind at all times as they impact the manner in which a student or athlete acts. Nonetheless, competition, and sports, can have a wonderfully positive influence on individuals. It acts as a source of personal accomplishments, is an avenue for verbal praise and motivation, and also plays a role in a positive psychological state with the proper framework. All of this however is depends on the facilitator. Under several studies, a coach or teacher’s confidence has a direct relationship to the participants under their care. A high confidence in the coach will result in a high confidence in their team.
Another key post to mention is the idea of resiliency. Sports and competition builds resiliency. While it may seem like high success and always winning would breed high confidence, it it actually incorrect. An athlete or student that faces failure and the succeeds, actually builds resiliency and a higher form of confidence. This “stumbling into confidence” method strengthens the student or athlete’s character and sets the student up for a greater deal of success in the future.
Supported Failure
Lahey, J. (2015). The gift of failure: How to step back and let your child succeed. London, UK: Short Books Ltd. Edited extract retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/05/parenting-tomorrow-why-should-let-children-fail
The idea of a trained fear of failure is a phenomenon that is prevalent among students these days. Students who are terrified of making a mistake and through this, are unwilling to ever take risks. But why is this the case? Parental and teacher intervention. As Jessica Lahey states in her 2015 book The Gift of Failure, “out of love and a desire to protect our children’s self-esteem, we have bulldozed every uncomfortable bump and obstacle out of their way, depriving our children of the most important lesson of childhood: that setbacks, mistakes and failures are the very experiences that will teach them how to be resourceful, persistent, innovative and resilient.”
Well put. The way in which we create a cocoon for our students, a protective shield against falling (and in this case failing), has made our students petrified of making a mistake. This fear comes from two sources. The desire for an idyllic childhood that parents and teacher so badly wish for their children, and the reality that to get our students on an easy road to success, we push them harder and harder to be the best. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is the reality. These over-parented, over-taught, over-guided students are going to have a very tough time when they enter adult life. When they leave school, the braces will have to be removed and if they aren’t strong enough, they will crumble. So why does Jessica Lahey’s book appeal to my inquiry question? Competition. The sheltering process many educators have engaged in, removing competition completely, is a product of this style of parenting. How do you expect you students to learn how to lose if they’re never given the chance to do so? How will they learn sportsmanship or working as team, or resilience, if you remove a barrier for them to overcome as a group? Yes, competition can be negative. Yes, competition can be part of the high-stakes race for the top that Lahey describes in the pursuit of giving one’s child the bets possible lot in life. However, it doesn’t have to. Competition can be good and depending on framework, is good. With many things in life, all in moderation and with a proper framework.
What is Gamification?
Savides, S. (2016, January 17). What is gamification? Bright Classroom Ideas [Web log post] Retrieved from http://brightclassroomideas.com/2016/01/17/what-is-gamification/?utm_content=buffer030ac&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer – more-317
To make things simple, gamification is “the use of elements of game-playing in another activity, usually in order to make that activity more interesting”. This seems like it would be something that your students would like yes? Gamification is an idea that is rooted deeply in how educators bring competition into their classroom. More often than not, it is gamification that is the platform for competition in the classroom and it is gamification that can act as a means to get our students engaged and active in content they might have not been otherwise. SO what are some key elements of gamification? As discussed in Savas Savides 2016 article on What is Gamification?, besides the winning or losing, students enjoy problem-solving, exploring, creating, imagining, collecting, role-playing, collaborating, or the simple relaxing atmosphere games can produce. These are elements that can permeate throughout your lessons and act to hook your students into the content. Therefore, I feel that incorporating elements of gamification into your class can serve as a motivation tool, in connection to competition, to engage student sin both an intrinsic and extrinsic way. Additionally, elements of gamification can be taken outside the context of an actual game and be worked into parts of your class to serves a specific motivational purpose. These can include learning progression, challenges, competition, cooperation, rewards, win states, achievements, badges, leaderboards, ssroteams. There are many possibilities for gamification in the classroom so take it engage with it, explore, and then extrapolate.
Positive Competition: A Business Perspective
Draper, T. (2013, October 2). Tim Draper: Positive competition. [Video file]. Retrieved 3 March 2016 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYaWk6a8YMc&app=desktop
First off, let me state that this resource doesn’t have to do with education. It does not contain the words student, classroom, or teacher. However, it does outline several of the key ideas surrounding competition. These are values that bleed down from the business world into the classroom for one simple reason: it is the way the world works. Here are a few keys points highlighting this from Tim Draper’s talk on Positive Competition at an event the TEDxUNPlaza in 2013.
- Competition is good
- Keeps us on our toes
- Creates innovators (in teaching entrepreneurs)
- We we compete, we get the best results (people are motivated)
Now, as this is talk was directed towards venture capitalists and investors, what I feel is the pinnacle of competitiveness, he discussed a key point. Not only is “real life” competitive, but it is something that is a commonality around the world. Every example he gave highlighted the idea of countries competing for a place at the table, a stake or share, an opportunity. There are billions of people jockeying for position and through these example, a message became clear to me. If our students don’t understand this reality, if we shield them from how the world works, they are in for a rude awakening indeed. Now I am not saying that every students needs to have this venture capitalist mentality, elbowing their peers for a shot at the title, but what this showed me is that many people do think this way. I would argue most people in the “real world” think this way. Therefore, it would be doing our students a disservice if they are not prepared. We can do this through many of the methods share on previous posts but this video really highlighted that removing competition entirely is, in many ways, setting our students up for failure.
Collaborative Competition: A Time and Place For Both
The world is inherently competitive. That is an argument expressed by many who are proponents of the model of winners and losers, victories and defeats. Due to this viewpoint (as it has been one that has reigned supreme for centuries), when it comes to competition, it is a phenomenon that inspires extremely powerful emotions from people who exist on either side of the debate on whether it is a “healthy” thing. It has been extraordinarily interesting to hear people’s responses to the idea of involving competition in a classroom. The responses are varied and full of passion, as most people have, in their lives (both educational and otherwise), when they’ve had a strong relationship with competition. When we think about the role competition plays in social relationships, it is often remarked how competition creates divides and alienates students who don’t fit into the system. Now we have discussed this previously, so that isn’t the point of this reflection, but what is, is that competition also acts in the inverse of this alienation. It can bond, solidify, and bring people together. The connections that competitions breads are incredible and are links that can last for decades.
So here I am. At the same impasse I was at a few weeks ago. My path towards collaborative competition has led me to a new place. A place I couldn’t have predicted when I started this exploration. Collaborative Competition. Now again, as I have previously stated, this could change my inquiry question, but it doesn’t. It is a means to an end. What is one way we can engage our students in positive competition in the classroom? Collaborative competition. So if this is a viable solution, let’s look at some interactions, albeit they are fairly limited still, that some educators have had with collaborative competition.
Bevacqua, J. (2013). Collaboration and competition. Connected Principals. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/8186
On the blog Connected Principals, Johnny Bevacqua explore the concept of collaborative competition. He highlights some key concepts that I have discussed in previous blog posts but are nonetheless worthy of repetition. In terms of the downsides to competition he states “Competition without collaboration promotes closed systems. It closes classroom doors and prevents innovation and new ideas.” This summarize a negative feature of competition we have all witnessed. But as he states this isn’t the be-all-and-end-all. The two can intermingle and support each other. In truly elegant fashion he states:
There is a place and a time for both. My nuanced take on this “dance” is that to be competitive in today’s world you must find ways to effectively collaborative. In other words, to be competitive, you must be collaborative.
Competition encourages time efficiency. Cooperation encourages accuracy. To be successful you must find a way to foster both. What was particularly interesting is that, in a study referenced by Bevacqua from ZeitNews, is that student associate self-esteem with the system they exist in. If they exist within a system of competition, then competition raises self-esteem. The inverse is also true with cooperation. If they exist within a system of cooperation, then cooperation raises self-esteem. Therefore, through magnificent logic, if we instilled a system of collaborative competition in our classrooms, wouldn’t our student associate collaborative competition with self-esteem? An idea to ponder.