Students’ teamwork behaviour in multidisciplinary student teams: an ethnographic case study

The great challenges of the modern age, such as climate change or global inequality, are complex problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Multidisciplinary teamwork is needed to bring together disciplinary insights and to create a more comprehensive understanding of these problems. Higher education should prepare students for working in multidisciplinary teams, but relatively little is known about how students interact in multidisciplinary student teams (MSTs). This study analysed teamwork behaviour of students in MSTs, using observational data. Our findings show that tendencies vary across different teams, but that general trends can be identified across teams. Students struggle to have structured meetings in which they work together on one task, have in-depth integrative discussions and reach quality decisions. They shy away from addressing suboptimal team processes and frustrations, but spend much time on task division, planning, uncertainty reduction and distractions during meetings.