Collaboration vs Competition

							Implications for Language Learning
 Look at the Handout.
 Play the game.
 Look at your results.
 What do they tell us about collaboration?
 Look at the Handout.
 What does this activity tell us about
 collaboration/cooperation?
 Online Prisoners’ Dilemma:
 http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/playground/pd.html
 Cooperative, as compared to competitive, systems
  of distributing rewards … have more favorable
  effects on individual and group productivity,
  individual learning, social relations, self-esteem,
  task attitudes, and a sense of responsibility to
  other group members.
 This is a well-established finding, even though it is
  counter to widely held ideologies about the relative
  benefits of competition. (Deutsch, 1985, p. 196)
Cooperative learning situations, compared
 with competitive and individual situations,
 promote higher levels of self-esteem and
 healthier processes for deriving
 conclusions about one’s self-worth. (Johnson,
 et al., 1983, p. 35)
 Cooperative learning … gives students an active
  role in deciding about, planning, directing and
  controlling the content and pace of their learning
  activities.
 It changes the students’ role from recipients of
  information to seekers, analyzers and synthesizers
  of information.
 It transforms pupils from listeners into talkers and
  doers, from powerless pawns into participant
  citizens empowered to influence decisions about
  what they must do in school. (Sharan, 1986, p. 4)
The truth is that the vast majority of
 human interaction … is not competitive but
 cooperative interaction. (Johnson & Johnson,
 1974, pp. 213)
All the evidence says that cooperative
 learning is natural and effective and
 competitive learning is destructive.
 If we examine the benefits of collaboration, we find
  that:
    encouragement is given;
    encouragement is received;
    sensitivity is promoted;
    the focus is on others (interpersonal responsibility);
    perspective-taking is promoted;
    communication and collective decision-making is promoted;
     and
    trust is promoted.

   These are desirable goals of education.
   In contrast, trust is almost absent under competition.
Working together gives students benefits in
 terms of achievement as well as enhancing
 self-esteem and the quality of relationships.
The fact that working on a common goal
 together produces higher achievement and
 greater productivity than working alone is one
 of the strongest principles of social and
 organizational psychology (Johnson & Johnson,
  1991, p. 40).
Cooperative Learning (CL) is not just a set of
 teaching techniques. It reflects an ethical
 orientation to life and involves a completely
 different approach to learning. (Clark, 1991, p. 3)
CL can transform education and society through
 letting students experience the achievement of
 goals in cooperation with others instead of
 against them.
Control, Curriculum, Community, the 3 Cs of CL.
  (Kohn, 1992, p. 220)
We should not be worrying about how well
 CL fits in with society’s institutions.
Rather, our institutions should be judged
 on how well they conform to the principles
 behind CL.
As things stand, our schools are much too
 competitive, which helps to explain why so
 little learning is taking place.
 If we want to truly educate students, the literature
  tells us that the teacher’s role is to stimulate a
  child’s curiosity, to facilitate the process of playing
  with ideas and constructing meaning, and to aid in
  the development of intellectual and social skills.
 People do wonderful work:
    when they are inspired, challenged, and excited by
     what they are doing; and
    when they receive social support and are able to
     exchange ideas and collaborate effectively with each
     other.
    Competition makes both less likely.
A model of teaching and learning that might
 arise out of a collaborative approach is ‘Group
 Investigation.’
Students decide what they want to know, make
 inquiry groups, and then decide how to divide up
 the work and conduct their investigation.
Each group collects information and analyzes it,
 then prepares and shares a final report or
 presentation about what has been learned.
Finally, each group contributes to the
 evaluation process, perhaps making up
 questions that will be included in a class test.
The purpose is to incorporate the evaluation
 into the learning process (Sharan, 1990, p. 158).
This is a sort of focused project approach that
 builds on the Montessori approach. Students
 work together, finding out what they want to
 learn and then reporting on that learning to
 the other students.
It is up to educators to identify sound principles
 and to insist on employing them.
It is imperative that collaboration be recognized
 and used in classrooms as an efficient means of
 achieving the goals of the 7th National Curriculum.
It can be done. There are a number of successful
 models of cooperative learning in the USA and
 Scandinavia (for example).
Education, trade and international
 relations are not zero-sum games.
Everyone can benefit through cooperation
 and collaboration.
Everyone can lose out through
 competition and distrust.
 Clark, J. (1991). The hidden treasure of co-operative learning.
  Cooperative Learning, 2/3.
 Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A socio-psychological
  perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1974) Instructional goal structure:
  Cooperative, competitive, or individualistic. Review of educational
  research, 44, 213-240.
 Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1983). The Socialization and
  achievement crisis: Are cooperative learning experiences the
  solution? In Bickman, B. (Ed.). Applied social psychology annual 4.
  Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.
 Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1991). Learning together and
  alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning.
  Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
 Kohn, A. (1992) No contest: The case against competition. New York:
  Houghton Mifflin Company.
 Sharan, S. (1986). Cooperative learning: Problems and promise.
  The international association for the study of cooperation in
  education newsletter, December issue, 3-4.
 Sharan, S. (1990). Cooperative learning and helping behavior in the
  multi-ethnic classroom. In Foot, H. C., Morgan, M. J., & Shute, R. H.
  (Eds.) Children helping children. Chichester, England: John Wiley
  and Sons.