Session Information
23 SES 07 B, Policies & Politics of Exclusion and Inclusion (Part 1)
Paper Session to be continued in 23 SES 08 B
Contribution
The paper aims at opening questions regarding the current ideals and semantics on competition and motivation within education.
The starting point of the paper is the observation that in recent decades we have witnessed an explosion in the use of comparisons between as well as within education systems. Education systems around the world compare themselves to each other by means of international comparative studies like OECD’s PISA study and IEA’s TIMSS and PIRLS studies. Such studies now exert a huge influence in deciding the directions in which governments seek to direct their education systems. Within education systems, as well, comparison has become pervasive. Schools and in some cases even teachers are systematically compared in the belief that, by benchmarking themselves against others schools and teachers can improve and attain educational ‘excellence’.
This enthusiasm for comparison is intimately linked to the belief in competition in the sense that comparison facilitates competition. Comparison by definition creates commensurability – it orders different entities along a common dimension and thus makes difference measurable and rankable (Heintz 2010). It therefore provides the axis along which competition can unfold and it also provides competitors with information about each other, which both serves to intensify their wish for improvement and to channel this wish in specific directions.
In the light of this enthusiasm for comparison and competition, it is interesting that it is not reflected in any straightforward way in current learning ideals. This applies not least to the ideal of maximizing student learning through individual learning targets. One important reason for this is that individual learning targets tend to make comparison problematic. While comparison and competition may in a number of contexts an effective motivational technology, they are also highly homogenizing in the sense of aligning efforts and desires around the same targets (White 1981/82). Individualized learning targets therefore imply that every student has his/her individual learning goals and does not compare his/her progress with the other students. What does this imply when it comes to assumptions regarding motivation? Is competition forbidden? What should be the ‘machine’ in the students’ motivation if the only comparison is with him/herself?
In order to conceptualize this new semantics regarding competition and motivation we draw on competition sociology (Geiger (1941), Simmel (2008)). One of the core distinctions in Simmel’s text Soziologie des Konkurrenz is the distinction between rivalries and competition. Rivalries refer to a battle between two, whereas competition involves a third party; the judge, the teacher etc. Our question is whether the current semantics and technologies with the focus on the individual and the individual’s ability to relate to him/herself as a learning subject may turn the competition into a self-competition – a ‘competition with oneself’. Our contention here is that in this case the structure of competition described by Simmel works differently. Here the relation to the third party (e.g. the teacher, the learning targets themselves) does not primarily serve as a mediator for the relationship with the other (the other learners), but as a mediator which is supposed to convert the side-glance into a glance directed at oneself. The relationship with the third party is here supposed to instill a reflective relation to oneself, thus ensuring that the self stays committed to its own learning project rather than being derailed by comparison with others.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Christensen, Søren (2015): ‘Healthy competition and unsound comparison: reforming educational competition in Singapore’. Globalisation, Societies and Education 13/4 Geiger, Theodor (1941): Konkurrence. En sociologisk analyse. København: Munksgaard Hattie, John (2009): Visible Learning. A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London and New York: Routledge. Heintz, B. (2010): ‘Numerische Differenz. Überlegungen zu einer Soziologie des (quantitativen) Vergleichs.’ Zeitschrift für Soziologie 39. Simmel, Georg (2008 (1904)): ’Sociology of competition’. Canadian Journal of Sociology (33/4) White, H.C. (1981/82): ‘Where do markets come from?’ American Journal of Sociology 87
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