Abstract
This article focuses on how teachers in different societies, namely a post-socialist society in Europe, an Asian democracy and a Western democracy, perceive and understand the role of competition. Teachers from Hungary, Japan and the USA were asked to answer an open-ended questionnaire. The qualitative analysis of the answers revealed those dimensions and categories of thinking teachers apply when describing the role of competition in their respective societies: the area of competition, the intensity of competition, the emotional evaluation of competition and the consequences of competition (positive and negative).
According to the results, American teachers are the most neutral towards competition, they concentrate rather on the directly perceivable aspects of competition, like area and intensity and they do not tend to elaborate on the consequences of competition, especially not on the negative ones. Both Japanese and Hungarian teachers are rather emotional and deep in their approach, referring more often to consequences and the relationship between competition and other social phenomena. While Japanese teachers are rather elaborate in terms of the positive consequences, Hungarian teachers are elaborate in terms of the negative ones. The results are explained by the historical and cultural differences among the three societies.