Why Collaboration Beats Competition in the Classroom
- Your Friends at Superspace
- Oct 14
- 5 min read
Shaping a Culture of Collaboration in the Classroom
Walk into any early childhood or elementary classroom and you’ll likely find a range of personalities, learning styles, and strengths.
Some students shine during group discussions, others focus deeply on hands-on tasks, and some quietly observe before contributing. Despite this diversity, many classrooms still operate under a system that rewards competition. Students compete for grades, attention, or even the best seat at the reading circle. But what if success in the classroom wasn’t defined by being the first or the best? What if success meant building something together?
The shift from competition to collaboration is more than an instructional strategy—it is a cultural transformation. For students in early childhood through fourth grade, collaboration lays the groundwork for empathy, creative problem-solving, and inclusive thinking. Research consistently supports this approach. A study published in Contemporary Educational Psychology (2011) found that cooperative learning significantly boosts motivation and academic achievement, particularly for students who may struggle in competitive environments. In these settings, success becomes a shared experience rather than a race with winners and losers.
Tools like Superspace are instrumental in supporting this shift. Designed to be lightweight, life-sized, and magnetically connected, Superspace allows students to construct large-scale environments and structures as a team. More importantly, it requires students to collaborate physically and socially. A single student cannot build a dome or maze alone, doing so takes communication, role-sharing, and group perseverance. These aren’t just side effects of using Superspace, they are the main outcomes.
Imagine a kindergarten class challenged to build a rocket ship using Superspace. At first, the students begin building separate pieces. But when one group’s wall tips over, another group rushes to help support it. Soon, they realize they’ll need to align their designs if the rocket is going to stand tall. Without teacher intervention, they start asking each other questions, drawing rough plans, and adjusting their tiles together. In that 45-minute session, these five- and six-year-olds have practiced spatial reasoning, cooperation, negotiation, and resilience. This type of peer-driven learning is what the Harvard Graduate School of Education (2020) calls “design-based play,” which they recognize as essential for both cognitive and social development.
What makes Superspace so effective is that it levels the playing field. It doesn’t matter who can read at the highest level or who solves math facts fastest. What matters is that each student can contribute meaningfully to a shared goal. This is especially critical for learners with different abilities, learning preferences, or those who may not thrive in typical academic settings. As outlined in the American Educational Research Journal (2013), mixed-ability group work enhances engagement and promotes more equitable learning outcomes. With Superspace, that equity is visible. One child might design the roof, another handles connections, while a third quietly observes and then offers a breakthrough suggestion when the group is stuck.
Teachers also benefit from this shift in classroom dynamics. In collaborative settings, educators move from the role of evaluator to that of facilitator and coach. Instead of asking “Who got it right?” the question becomes “How did your team solve this?” Superspace lends itself naturally to these inquiry-based prompts. For instance:
What roles did each person take in building your structure?
What was the biggest challenge you faced, and how did your team solve it?
If you could rebuild your structure tomorrow, what would you change?
This encourages reflection and metacognition, key skills for lifelong learners.
Collaboration doesn’t mean there is no structure or assessment. It simply shifts the focus. Educators can assess collaborative learning using rubrics that measure both process and product. Key areas might include:
Active listening and respectful communication
Shared decision-making
Perseverance during challenges
Contribution of ideas and effort
Ability to reflect on group performance
These skills are just as important as content mastery, and Superspace makes them observable and authentic.
A fourth-grade class recently used Superspace to build models of animal habitats. One group created a jungle canopy with interconnected climbing branches for a monkey habitat. Another designed a burrow with a retractable tunnel entrance for a fox. While the scientific knowledge of habitats was the academic focus, what emerged was a richer learning experience. The students planned, built, debated, revised, and ultimately presented their models as a team. When reflecting on the lesson, one student said, “It was cool that we all had different ideas, but we made something better because we mixed them together.”
This real-world application is aligned with research from Uttal et al. (2013), which found that spatial play significantly improves STEM learning outcomes, especially when combined with collaboration. Superspace isn’t just a fun toy, it’s a STEM platform that empowers students to take on complex tasks together. It supports multiple subject areas, from math to literacy to science, while embedding social-emotional learning at every stage.
And what about conflict? Yes, collaborative learning invites disagreements and misunderstandings. But these are opportunities, not obstacles. Through building with Superspace, students experience moments where their ideas clash or a wall collapses and forces them to re-strategize. These real-time challenges build resilience, communication, and empathy, skills that no worksheet or textbook can replicate. According to Slavin et al. (2013), these soft skills, when taught through cooperative tasks, directly correlate with better academic retention and improved student attitudes toward learning.
Perhaps most importantly, collaboration through tools like Superspace helps reframe what it means to succeed. In a competitive classroom, success is narrow—it belongs to the fastest, the highest-scoring, the boldest. In a collaborative classroom, success is shared. It belongs to the group that brainstormed, compromised, and built something greater than the sum of its parts. Superspace makes that success visible, tangible, and joyful.
By shifting the classroom focus from competition to collaboration, we give our students something far more valuable than a gold star, we give them the tools to become thoughtful, resilient, and connected individuals. Superspace helps make that possible, one tile at a time.
Accompanying Activity
Bring Collaboration to Life in the classroom
Looking to bring these ideas to life in your own classroom? Try our “Building a Rocket Together” activity guide, a hands-on Superspace lesson that invites young learners to plan, build, and problem-solve as a team. In this 45-minute challenge, students work together to construct a life-sized rocket, practicing communication, cooperation, and creativity along the way. It’s an engaging, play-based way to help even the youngest learners experience what true collaboration feels like.
References
Harvard Graduate School of Education. (2020). Play, design, and learning: A case for play-based pedagogy in STEM.
Slavin, R. E., Hurley, E. A., & Chamberlain, A. (2013). Cooperative learning and achievement: Theory and research. American Educational Research Journal, 50(2), 243–270. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227988895_Cooperative_Learning_and_Achievement_Theory_and_Research
Uttal, D. H., Miller, D. I., & Newcombe, N. S. (2013). Exploring and enhancing spatial thinking: Links to achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(5), 367–373.
Van Ryzin, M. J., & Roseth, C. J. (2011). Cooperative learning in middle school: A means to improve peer relations and reduce victimization, bullying, and related outcomes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(2), 93–101.
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