Clarence Fisher up at Remote Access needs to be in your aggregator.
Contests and rankings are easy. They let us know who comes in first, second, and so on. Even if the results aren't valid, they still give us results that are easy to work with. How do we rank collaborative abilities? How do we see who has the strongest sense of working with others and of cultural understanding? It can be done, but it is a process that is more time intensive and based on portfolios, discussions and interviews. But put simply, things that take time are expensive and systems don't like words like that.
February 17th, 2009 at 9:22 PM
[ But between contest mania and standardized testing, I fear that competition is the only drum that kids are hearing. "Kids need to compete."]
I thought this statement was interesting. I read it and the first thing that came to mind is all the hype for end of year testing. Students have thier contracts signed to promise to do thier best and be honest and so on. They are given points for different things, like finishing test in this amount of time, good behavior, and so on. They are competing to get the most points to earn fun day time. They want to do thier best to get the most time to have fun that day. I remember helping some special education kids that couldn’t test in thier room. I was given this point sheet to take care of. I returned test booklets and the teacher wanted the point sheet and didn’t ask one question about the students emotions, concerns, or anything else. She just wanted to know what she needed to take points off for. I don’t know seemed odd, but I may be looking at it wrong. Do you think awarding points to students for using all thier time allowed and behaving during test time is a effective tool?
February 18th, 2009 at 1:49 PM
I’m going to disagree with the article. I love competition and believe that it brings out the best in all of us. For instance look at the job market, obviously if you are seeking employment in the US during this economic crisis you better be better than everyone else or be able to do something that they can’t do. I also believe that competition has its place in education. Think about it like this, if there was some way to measure your ability as a teacher and how effective your methods were in comparison to other teachers of the particular subject and your pay was based on that ranking, how much harder would you work? Now I know that the debate can be made, that there isn’t any effective method for measuring a teacher’s ability and that it would be unreliable, but lets assume that in this case it is completely reliable. I feel that I work pretty hard to be the best teacher in my district, but I could certainly work just a little harder especially if there was $ on the line. If teachers were offered incentives for reaching benchmarks it would create a little competition and I think it would be great in education. My fourth period class is the easiest class I have ever taught, the group as a whole is very competitive in anything, if one gets a problem right the others are scrambling to solve the next one. It is so easy to teach that group and it is because of the competition that exists. I know there are negatives that can come from competition, but in my opinion, competition brings out the best in people.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:08 PM
In ways I agree with the article and in ways I do not.
I also do not like those emails concering the newest latest competition for the next holiday. Make a flag! Make a poster! who can send the most letters to our soldiers? If there is no context to my content AT THAT TIME they are useless to me, and I beleive to our students. BUT I am constantly having “competitions” in my classroom. Many times it is girls against boys. I teach math. Guess which group usually wins? THE GIRLS! Not capable of doing well in math??? Bullsnockers!! This can also drive my male students to get with the program and study a bit more. They HATE being beaten by the girls.
February 19th, 2009 at 7:52 AM
Yup. I think there’s a lot here – pro and con. A certain level of inherent competition is probably part of every living being.
But Clarence raises a good point. If *all* we evaluate is the result of competition, then aren’t we missing out on the value of cooperation and collaboration?
How might we get a handle on that?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:17 PM
I feel the same way about students and competition. At our school we have a middle floor team and a bottom floor team. Our team being the middle floor team. I am always saying we need to do better than the bottom floor team and it does seem to spark their interest and motivation. When it gets close to CATS testing I always tell my students they need to do well to outperform the bottom floor students. They don’t want to be the “losers” of the school. They want to do better. As a teacher in a tested area, I say go for it!