“Competition Doesn’t Have to Mean ‘Mean’” The Balance Between Establishing Community and Challenge for Gifted and Talented Students

Abstract Book of the 10th International Academic Conference on Education

Year: 2026

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“Competition Doesn’t Have to Mean ‘Mean’” The Balance Between Establishing Community and Challenge for Gifted and Talented Students

Kenneth Reimer

ABSTRACT:

This paper examines the balance that effective classroom teachers must achieve in order to both foster supportive communities and incorporate academic challenges for all their students. In 2025, a study was conducted in Canada exploring the perceptions of students on why their favourite classroom teacher was their favourite teacher. This study invited university professors with doctorate degrees to be individually interviewed in order to better understand what made a particular classroom teacher their favourite teacher. The participants (n=8) who consented to participate in the study were interviewed individually and asked to describe their favourite teacher. A review of these interviews uncovered several themes, including a key theme that, “effective classroom teachers need to establish supportive communities and create opportunities for competition.” This article reviews literature pertaining to the act of community building and competition, and then highlights specific examples in which participants described how their favourite teachers were able to do both.

Keywords: Community, Competition, Differentiation, Inclusion, Gifted And Talented