Integrating beyond the Surface: Conceptual Disambiguation and Conversational Learning for Shared Meaning-Making in Interdisciplinary Teamwork

Integrating beyond the Surface: Conceptual Disambiguation and Conversational Learning for Shared Meaning-Making in Interdisciplinary Teamwork | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Integrating beyond the Surface: Conceptual Disambiguation and Conversational Learning for Shared Meaning-Making in Interdisciplinary Teamwork Annemarie Horn, Eduardo Urias This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Under Review Version 1 posted 14 You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Integrating knowledge from different disciplines is considered key to realizing the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration and is central to many interdisciplinary research and education initiatives. However, how to stimulate knowledge integration remains elusive. As a middle ground between metatheories that provide all-encompassing conceptualizations of integration and accounts of specific interventions and methodologies to support integration, we set out to identify principles that govern a specific form of knowledge integration: conceptual integration. Using an action research approach, we studied conceptual integration processes in a team of eight students enrolled in diverse Master’s programs. We found that they often made quick decisions about concepts, definitions, and relationships between concepts. However, there were several instances where such decisions were later turned out to be false senses of shared understanding. We considered these instances to be indicative of a lack of ‘conceptual disambiguation’. Instead of first thoroughly making sense of the overlap and non-overlap between their conceptual understandings, they immediately jumped to agreeing on the terminology they used. At surface level, their work appeared to be integrated. We continued to explore how we could stimulate conceptual disambiguation and integration. We used Conversational Learning Theory and found that its five dialectics proved helpful in identifying, understanding and addressing the dynamics that hindered conceptual integration. Based on these findings, we argue that conceptual disambiguation should be granted greater attention in facilitating and training conceptual integration, and that conversational learning theory can be adopted as a guiding principle to recognize and address bottlenecks in conceptual integration. Social science/Education Social science/Science technology and society Social science/Sociology interdisciplinarity teamwork knowledge integration conversational learning conceptual disambiguation higher education Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Introduction A prominent premise of interdisciplinary collaboration is that a more comprehensive understanding of complex (societal) issues can be achieved when representatives of different academic disciplines bring together their knowledge (Klein, 2014 ; Salazar et al., 2012 ). This goes beyond the representation of diverse expertises and knowledge bases in a team; it depends on the ability of teams to integrate insights from different fields to generate new understandings and to actively engage in the associated learning processes (Decuyper et al., 2010 ; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022; Repko & Szostak, 2017 ). Knowledge integration is therefore seen as key to realizing the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration and is considered a defining characteristic of interdisciplinarity, distinguishing it from other forms of discipline-crossing, such as multidisciplinarity (Klein, 2017 ). Consequently, knowledge integration to reach a more comprehensive understanding is often sought in interdisciplinary research efforts (Pennington, 2016 ; Siedlok & Hibbert, 2014 ) and is often pursued in interdisciplinary education as to train individuals in integration competencies, with the aim of preparing individuals to address complex (societal) issues (Ivanitskaya et al., 2002 ; Oudenampsen et al., 2024 ; van Lambalgen & van der Tuin, 2024 ). In addition to the widely recognized importance of knowledge integration for interdisciplinary collaboration, it is also considered one of its greatest challenges. It is reported that even when knowledge integration is pursued, it is often not (fully) achieved (Boix Mansilla et al., 2009 ; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022; Lélé & Norgaard, 2005 ). Moreover, diverse teams may face power imbalances and hierarchies that lead to interpretation monopolies if they do not negotiate their understanding (Bergmann, 2012 ). In response to these challenges, it has been argued that knowledge integration require targeted methods and tools (Bammer et al., 2020 ; Bergmann, 2012 ; Hoffmann, Weber, et al., 2022) and structured facilitation of integration processes (Defila & Di Giulio, 2015 ; Hoffmann, Weber, et al., 2022) to reap the benefits of epistemic diversity in interdisciplinary teamwork. The existing literature provides concrete handles on how to facilitate and train knowledge integration with countless tools, integrative methods, and interventions that have been developed, applied, described, and studied. Here we just name a few as an illustration. The Dialogue Toolbox Initiative has developed workshop formats to stimulate dialogue about the underlying value systems that team members bring to interdisciplinary teamwork and to engage teams in co-creation activities (O’Rourke et al., 2020 ; O’Rourke & Crowley, 2013 ). The CoNavigator tool provides workshop formats and materials to stimulate integrative brainstorming in which individuals exchange (disciplinary) insights and engage in conversations about how their insights relate to each other (Lindvig et al., 2017 ). And in their book, Repko & Szostak ( 2021 ) provide a methodology for knowledge integration in which interdisciplinary endeavors (which may or may not be collaborative) go through a series of steps, first identifying conflicts between disciplinary contributions, and then addressing these conflicts by using a set of approaches –integration techniques– to create new concepts and relationships. While these tools and methods are concrete, knowledge integration is also understood as a complex, open-ended, contextual, and plural phenomenon. Two ‘metatheories’ by O’Rourke et al.(2016) and Pohl et al. ( 2021 ) have attempted to bring together the wealth of definitions and conceptualizations of integration. Both have in common that they understand integration as the process of establishing new relationships between previously unrelated components. In addition, they both emphasize the diversity of practices captured by the term. O’Rourke et al ( 2016 ) outline the heterogeneity in terms of which epistemic elements are being integrated, the scale at which integration takes place, the degree of commensurability, the comprehensiveness of integration, and the types of integrative relations that are created. Pohl et al ( 2021 ) add to this whether integration takes place within a single individual or between multiple individuals, and whether it is unidirectional or mutual. This thus demonstrates the heterogeneity of practices captured by the term integration. Such broad conceptualizations and frameworks are essential for comprehensively defining what we do and do not mean when we use the term integration. Yet, all-encompassing conceptualizations provide limited insight into how integration emerges or can be facilitated in specific situations. Conversely, descriptions of interventions, methods and tools, provide concrete insights and guidance for practice, but it is often difficult to transfer their lessons to contexts where other methods are deployed. In this study, we do not provide new methods or tools for interdisciplinary knowledge integration, but instead we set out to identify principles that govern integration processes beyond a single interaction or intervention. We argue that such principles complement the existing literature by finding a middle ground between the decontextualized nature of large metatheories and the contextualized nature of specific interventions. In line with cautions against understanding integration mechanistically (Laursen & O’Rourke, 2019 ), we argue that grappling with the ‘how’ of knowledge integration is highly challenging –if not impossible– when considering integration in the full complexity and heterogeneity that we have outlined above. We have therefore narrowed down the focus of our study. We take the metatheories described earlier (O’Rourke et al., 2016 ; Pohl et al., 2021 ) as descriptions of heterogeneity through which to make sense of forms and contexts of knowledge integration. On this basis, we have narrowed down the focus of our study to one particular form of knowledge integration for which we aim to gain insight into ‘how’ it occurs and can be facilitated: the integration of concepts (and their understandings and relationships) that takes place in interactions between two or more individuals in a team and manifests as the development of novel (for the team) conceptual understandings and terminologied that the whole team commits to for the purpose of the joint project. From now on we refer to conceptual integration. In the following sections we describe our action research study of the conceptual integration process in a team of students engaging in interdisciplinary teamwork. We distill principles that helped us to recognize, understand, and address bottlenecks for conceptual integration. These principles fall into two categories: first, we identify the lack of ‘conceptual disambiguation’ as a general pitfall when engaging in conceptual integration, and second, we use conversational learning theory to zoom in on specific dynamics that impair conceptual disambiguation and integration and possible strategies to overcome these dynamics. Methods To further understand how conceptual knowledge integration processes emerge and can be facilitated and trained, we used a multi-method action research approach to study interdisciplinary knowledge integration processes in a student team. We made observations during weekly team meetings with the students and conducted interviews. In line with the action research approach (Reason & Bradbury, 2012), we did this in a continuous process of designing, implementing, reflecting on, and revising the course activities and supervision approach. This allowed us to closely study the dynamics and experiment with interventions and strategies, to test assumptions and to gain insight into possible strategies to support the integration processes. We worked closely with the students for a period of five months which allowed us to build a relationship of trust (Dosemagen & Schwalbach, 2019) and to gather insights on a large number of instances and in different contexts using different methods (Erro-Garcés & Alfaro-Tanco, 2020). Combining observations from team meetings and interviews allowed for methodological and data triangulation, to increase the reliability of our findings (Korstjens & Moser, 2018). Our approach also meant that we had dual roles as educators and researchers. We separated and explicitly communicated our roles to the students, to minimize role ambiguity and -interference. The first author was the primary researcher, taking field notes and conducting the interviews, while merely providing support in supervision and teaching. She had no formal role in grading the students’ work. In contrast, the second author was the primary teacher and assessor, keeping a distance from the data collection and analysis, while he supervised the research in more general terms. Study Context We collected our data in the context of the 2021 offering of the master’s course [Course name] [1] . This is a course that students from any master’s program at our university can take voluntarily as an extracurricular activity, or –depending on the regulations of their own program– as an elective course within their master’s curriculum. The course runs in parallel to students’ individual graduation projects (e.g., thesis or research-oriented internship) in which they conduct (empirical) research that meets the formal requirements of their own master’s programs, covering topics and using methods appropriate to their field of study. For [name of the course], students with individual projects on related topics work together to integrate the insights from their individual projects and produce a joint report on a larger societal issue. The team we followed in this study, worked on the topic ‘Circular Economy’. The course ran for 21 consecutive weeks from February to June 2021, with weekly meetings lasting one to two hours. As COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures were in place for the entire during of the course, all meetings took place online via Zoom. This setting in which the disciplinary subprojects are already (partially) defined prior to negotiating the joint project, contrasts with ‘question-driven’ interdisciplinarity (Horn, Scheffelaar, et al., 2022), in which a large research question forms the starting point for assembling a team and defining more specific (more disciplinary) research questions, as used, for example, in the IGERT graduate program (Bosque-Pérez et al., 2016). This specific research context shaped our findings. We provided thick descriptions of our observations and juxtaposed them with our interpretations, in order to enable readers to assess the relevance of our findings to their own contexts, thereby supporting transferability (Korstjens & Moser, 2018). To facilitate conceptual knowledge integration, the students developed an integrative theoretical framework (Bergmann, 2012) of their joint project. Throughout the course, they gradually and iteratively developed a visual representation of the concepts and connections relevant to their project, based on the literature, the concepts, frameworks and empirical data from their individual projects. This representation served as a boundary object for negotiating shared understandings (Pennington, 2016; von Wehrden et al., 2019). We implemented learning activities in order to support the development of their integrative theoretical framework, such as presenting the concepts and frameworks from their individual projects to each other, developing of definitions of concepts, questioning and substantiating concepts and their connections, joint coding of data, and presenting preliminary findings to each other. In line with the action research approach, we designed some of these activities prior to the start of the course, and implemented others in response to the team processes and needs that we observed or that the students indicated. As the course progressed, the balance shifted towards a more reactive approach, as their needs became more specific and our understanding of the dynamics and challenges in our team advanced. In the Supplementary Materials, we provide a detailed outline of the course activities per week, distinguishing between planned and reactively implemented activities. Participants For this study, we followed a student team consisting of eight students. All eight students in the team participated in the study. The students were enrolled in diverse master’s programs: Work and Organizational Psychology (2); Business Administration, Digital Business Innovation; Environment and Resource Management; Food Innovation and Healthy Food Policy; Science and Technology Policy; and Management, Policy Analysis, and Entrepreneurship in the Health and Life Sciences. They brought varying background knowledge, experience, and projects, including varying degrees of disciplinary specialization. Data Collection We collected observational data, interview data, written student reflections, and recordings of the weekly meetings. The first author kept a reflective observational journal during the weekly team meetings. In line with the action research approach, the observations were guided by questions that we updated during the study, based on reflections of both authors. We recorded the team meetings in order to be able to revisit specific conversations. In weeks 3, 7, 13, and 21, the first author conducted individual interviews with all students. These interviews lasted approximately one hour, took place via Zoom, and were conducted in either Dutch (4/8 students) or English (4/8 students), depending on the student’s preference. The interviews were semi-structured and followed topic lists that we defined together between both authors, based on the observations and reflections. In the first interview we aimed to capture the students’ starting points in terms of expectations, disciplinary views, and prior knowledge and competencies; in the second, their experiences with their different disciplinary perspectives in the first phase of the teamwork; in the third, their experiences with the teamwork as their projects progressed; and in the fourth, their experiences throughout the entire collaboration process. We recorded the interviews and transcribed them verbatim. In weeks 1- 9, 11, 16, 17, 19, and 21, the students completed written reflection exercises covering several topics, including: their own disciplinary background and underlying assumptions, their views and expectations of interdisciplinarity, the competencies they needed and developed in the process, and how they experienced the collaboration. These reflection exercises were primarily for pedagogical purposes, but we have also included them as research data in this study. Data Analysis In analyzing the data, we first took an abductive reasoning approach, where a surprising observation that did not match our expectations guided our analysis (Mantere & Ketokivi, 2013; Zanin et al., 2020). In the interactions with the students, we were surprised that their decisions towards an integrative theoretical framework were often characterized by consensus, but not by shared reconceptualization (as described by Newell, 2006; Repko & Szostak, 2021) or the creation new relationships between previously unrelated concepts (Pohl et al., 2021). Even when they appeared to have reached shared understanding –as was implied by a decision to include or not include certain concepts, to merge several terms into a single concept, or to (not) link up two or more concepts in their map– this often turned out to not signify shared understanding, as was later revealed when a ‘false sense of shared understanding’ was exposed. The insights that followed from those observations are described in the first part of the Results Section. In order to define principles that helped us recognize, understand and address bottlenecks for conceptual integration, we proceeded the analysis deductively. The important role for dialogic interactions that we observed in our student team and in the literature (O’Rourke et al., 2020; Piso et al., 2016; Tsoukas, 2009), led us to consult Baker et al.’s (2005) Conversational Learning Theory to make sense of the interactions in our team. Baker et al (2005) coined five dialectics which we operationalized for our context of conceptual integration. The second part of the results section is structured around these five dialectics and includes the operationalization to our context. Ethics All students participated in the study on a voluntary basis. They gave written informed consent for their date to be used for scientific research. They could withdraw from the study at any time, and their decision whether or not to participate in the study, did not affect their ability to participate in the course, or for their relationship with the teaching/research team. They were explicitly informed of this. In order to ensure the confidentiality of the participants, we report the findings anonymously, avoiding identifiable information such as gender, nationality, study background, or the topics of their individual projects in relation to specific examples and quotes from the data. The Ethics Committee of the Science Faculty of [university censored] exempted the project that this study was part of from ethical clearance. [1] For more information about the design of the [name of the course] and its institutional embedding have been described in more detail by, we direct readers to [censored reference #1]. Findings At Surface Level: Assumed Shared Understanding While supervising the student team, we noticed that they often made quick decisions about their integrative theoretical framework, with little or no substantiation in the form of examples or arguments. In a number of cases, it became apparent later in the collaboration that these agreements were in fact un(-der-)substantiated. This happened when the students found out that they had different understandings of concepts, definitions or relationships that they previously thought to share. We consider those moments of realization to expose a ‘false sense of shared understanding’. In those instances, their work appeared to be integrated because they used identical terminology and agreed on the choice or definition of concepts or relationships between concepts. But it turned out that they did not share the same understanding of the underlying meaning of concepts or the relationships between concepts. We take cases where a false shared understanding was exposed to mean that the previous shared understanding was un(der)substantiated. This, in turn, we take to signify that at that earlier point in time they had not engaged sufficiently in shared meaning-making to arrive at a shared understanding beyond shared decisions and shared terminology. One instance where we observed exposure of a false shared understanding among our students, occurred in meeting 16. The students engaged in joint coding of interview data from individual projects with the concepts from their integrative theoretical framework. During the meeting, the students (in parallel, in the two groups) went through the interview transcript together and compared and discussed their codings. The following quote from our observational journal provides an example of an instance where a false sense of shared understanding about one of the concepts in their integrative theoretical framework was exposed: [S6] coded a part of the interview which is about how the respondent sees herself as “perceived personality”. [S5] jumps in to explain that in her research (which is where the concept comes from) perceived personality refers to the personality of the product, not of the consumer. [...] This reaches [S6], as she says she now has more clarity about what is meant by the concept [...] but I find it striking that apparently it didn’t land with her before, despite having worked with the concept and with [S5] for over three months. - Observational journal week 16 This example shows that the concept of ‘perceived personality’ appeared to be an outcome of integration on the surface level, because it was part of the theoretical framework that the students created together and to which they had all committed. The students believed that they had reached shared understanding of the concepts and relationships in their integrative theoretical framework. However, on closer inspection, when they started to apply it to specific pieces of data, it became clear that although they were using the same term , they had not reached a shared conceptual understanding . Instead, they each had a different understanding of the concept, even though they thought they were on the same page among its meaning. This shows that the conceptual map appeared to be more synthesized than the underlying understanding was. We take this observation as an indication that differences in understanding left were implicit, which stood in the way of developing a shared understanding for conceptual integration. We argue that this demonstrates the need to make the differences in understanding explicit and therefore calls for ‘conceptual disambiguation’. It is important to note that by disambiguating we refer to resolving ambiguities –openness to different interpretations or meanings– and not to resolving differences . Differences are key to interdisciplinary collaboration and should be used to take advantage of epistemic diversity. We argue that conceptual integration requires that these differences be made. Leaving these differences implicit leaves openness for different understandings –ambiguity– which may be at the root of false senses of shared understanding. Once the different understandings are made explicit, exchanged and explained among team members, this opens up the possibility of assessing their relationships and commensurability and possibly negotiating a shared understanding (for the purpose and in the context of the joint work). We, therefore, see conceptual disambiguation as an essential process for conceptual integration. Conversational Learning to Go beyond the Surface So, we recognized that our student team often did not engage sufficiently in conceptual disambiguation, leading to false senses of shared understanding and thereby sidelining their integrative efforts. We continued our quest to understand how we could recognize and address dynamics that were interfering with their integration processes. In Conversational Learning Theory (Baker et al., 2005) we found a useful framework for understanding and managing the dynamics in our student team. It describes five process dialectics, navigating of which opens up a conversational learning space. The dialectical nature means that they consider shared understanding as being achieved through the interplay of (apparent) opposites, navigating which involves balancing and uniting these tensions (Baker et al., 2005) . In the following subsections we describe how the dialectics helped us to make sense of the dynamics that we observed in our team and how navigating them could be achieved and used to support team integration processes. 1. Apprehension-Comprehension In the context of conceptual integration, we understand apprehension and comprehension to show in the substantiations and argumentations that students provide for the decisions, such as the selection or definition of concepts or their relationships. In defining concepts and substantiating conceptual relationships, we saw that the students drew on conceptual, abstract understandings (comprehension), or used vivid everyday examples and explanations (apprehension). We observed that the students in our team generally leaned more towards the apprehension, than comprehension. Conversations were often dominated by everyday examples and popular understanding, while conceptual contributions were relatively rare. For example, in the meeting in week 3 we instructed the students to look for connections between their individual projects. We observed that they tended to look for links at a practical level, such as studying the same sector (e.g. fashion), waste stream (e.g. food waste), or research population (e.g. consumers), but not so much at a conceptual level. S1 said the following: “ if [S6] decides to also work on food waste, we may have a link there ”, implying that she only sees a connection between their work if they are studying the same application area, rather than also considering sharing key concepts or theories. In response to this observation, we tried to counteract this tendency and to encourage more conceptual conversations. In week 8, we instructed the students to share the concepts and frameworks that they used for their individual projects, and to use these to develop a joint conceptual representation. We saw that the students engaged in more conceptual discussions. However, several students expressed that they found this phase of the project unmotivating, vague, and difficult. We see this as an indication that the move towards the conceptual went against the students’ natural tendencies, but we also think that this may be due to the fact that these conversations overshot in the opposite direction; the abstract conversation existed in a conceptual vacuum, and became disconnected from examples and application. When we began to implement interventions to link the practical and the conceptual, we found that new insights emerged from the conversations, and the students experienced revelations, identifying new relationships, or rethinking the relationships between, or definitions of concepts. For example, in week 12, we instructed the students to critically question decisions they had previously made in their framework, such as the decision to link two concepts, to link them in a particular direction, or the absence of links between two concepts. We instructed them to answer these questions about the concepts and relationships in their framework by providing concrete examples, from their research data or practical experience. In introducing the exercise, one of us teachers gave an example of how laws and regulations can play a role in consumer food choices. This seemed to strike a chord with S1, and during that meeting she began to make connections that she had not seen before. She confirmed that this moment was transformative for her: “[the teacher] suggested that my project was related to laws and regulations, by giving a very practical example, I found that very useful.” (S1, interview 3, week 13). In the example at the beginning of this Findings Section, a false sense of shared understanding was exposed when students engaged in joint coding of interview data. This is also an activity in which they moved back and forth between, and connected, the concrete –examples and experiences from a respondent– and the abstract –the concepts from their integrative theoretical framework. S6 said the following about this interaction: “We had agreed on certain concepts with each other, but there turned out to be differences in how we understood and operationalized them. These differences came to light when we discussed the results, because in interviews they can manifest themselves just slightly differently. So when we were discussing the data, those differences were highlighted, which allowed us to ask better questions about the framework” - S6 interview 4, week 21 So, in this exercise, they navigated the apprehension-comprehension dialectic, which helped to expose false senses of shared understanding and thus helped them move beyond the surface in their conceptual integration process. [insert figure 1 here] Overall, we found that the students in our course tended towards the practical or concrete –apprehension– rather than the conceptual or abstract –comprehension. Interventions to shift them towards the conceptual succeeded in stimulating more conceptual conversations, but ran the risk of causing a disconnect from the practical. Once they began to actively and continuously connect the abstract and the practical, falsely assumed agreements and misunderstandings were exposed and new insights emerged that helped to create a shared understanding and to negotiate their integrative theoretical framework at a level of meaning. Figure 1 summarizes of our operationalization of the dialectic in the context of conceptual integration in interdisciplinary teamwork, the manifestations of team or individual functioning when overshooting towards either end, and possible interventions to guide conversations towards balancing and uniting both ends of the dialectic. Dialectic 2: Epistemological Discourse-Ontological Recourse We understand this dialectic as describing the processes of making decisions about definitions of, and relationships between concepts (naming, epistemological discourse) and of questioning and reconsidering definitions and relationships by analyzing their meaning (framing, ontological recourse). Throughout the project, we observed that when the students in our course engaged in defining their project and research questions, they tended towards naming rather than framing. They preferred linear progress to rethinking and questioning the choices they had made or were making. The following example illustrates this tendency from as student’s perspective: “ It’s easier to go for a quick fix [...] as a group we do that a lot, we try not to do things slowly and think about it a lot. [...] for example when we decide on our research question. The first time it was like: ‘Oh! This is the one!’, we didn’t think about it a lot.” - S7, interview 3, week 13 In response to this tendency, we implemented interventions to stimulate framing behavior. For instance, we encouraged the students to question their integral theoretical framework throughout the course, and instructed them to consider the mind map and research questions as tentative throughout their project. We, as teachers, also asked many questions ourselves, aimed at opening up discussion and introducing recursive loops. But when we tried to initiate a recursive movement in the students’ conversational process, they tended to respond in more recursively. For example, when we questioned the decisions the students had made in formulating their research question, their reflex was to substitute one word for another, rather than to more fundamentally examine the aim and framing of their research. We observed a recursive-discursive dynamic that produced new insights as the students began to write. By putting down on paper the thoughts and ideas that they had discussed repeatedly, they committed themselves to certain relationships, but they also questioned themselves and each other about definitions and relationships. While gaps or inconsistencies in their reasoning may have remained hidden in conversation, they were exposed when they started writing. These exposed ‘plot holes’ were the starting point for renewed conversations to further develop their understanding of the topic, to work together on what they meant and how they phrased it. As one student put it: “ We held each other accountable, like: ‘we decided this before, but does it add up?’ [...] When we started to put the story down on paper, we found out that there were gaps that needed to be filled in. [...] I think that this is partly inherent in the writing phase, but also that we were able to address these gaps because we had worked on them so much in the course. It had become easier to ask questions and find out what issue needed to be addressed. ”- S3 interview 4, week 21 So, we saw that the students in our course had a strong tendency towards epistemological recourse. Although this tendency prevailed throughout the course, towards the end, when they were writing up their work and the lessons and examples from the course came together, they began to demonstrate more ontological recourse dynamics as well. Figure 2 summarizes our operationalization, the tendencies to overshoot to either end of the spectrum and possible interventions to help balance and unite both ends of the dialectic. [insert figure 2 here] Dialectic 3: Status-Solidarity In the context of conceptual integration, we understand the third dialectic as the confidence and assertiveness to contribute insights and knowledge from one’s own disciplinary perspective –status–, and the openness and humility to consider and engage with the contributions of others and to adapt flexibly to one’s teammates –solidarity. In earlier work in the same context, we conceptualized this as taking on the role of expert and non-expert, respectively [reference censored]. In general, we saw that the students in our team were leaning strongly towards the solidarity end of the dialectic and ran the risk of stepping into the pitfall that Baker et al. (2005) described as aimlessness and repetitiveness, because no one took the lead or took a strong stance. At the very end of the project, S4 looked back on their dynamic and described it as follows: “For quite a while I felt that we were going round in circles, that we kept discussing the same things without making any progress. [...] I think that nobody in the group really knew the best way to go about it, and that everybody was just fine however it went. We would leave it to others to make decisions, but they didn’t know either and so it just kept going back and forth” - S4, interview 4, week 21 There were, however, also a few individuals in the team who were more likely to speak up when decisions needed to be made or when we asked for input, thus demonstrating more status behavior. S2, for instance, was often one of the first to speak up. She found that her teammates were often more reluctant to contribute, creating an imbalance that gave disproportionate weight to her contributions, without that being her intention: “ I don’t mean to tell them what we should do, I also want to learn something from them. It doesn’t work if I suggest something and the others accept that without a question asked [...] because then the project just becomes my research project ” - S2 interview 3, week 13 In order to prevent this dynamic, and to encourage the team and its members towards uniting solidarity and status behaviors, we stimulated the students explicitly to make knowledge contributions. For example, at the very beginning of the collaboration we had the students present their individual projects to each other. This first round of presentations was part of the initial design of the course, but in response to the tendency towards solidarity we decided to implement additional activities in which they had to share insights from their individual projects. This included presenting their concepts and frameworks to each other in the meeting in week 8, sharing concepts and frameworks in writing in week 12, and presenting findings from their individual projects in week 18. We found that these activities prompted the students to share more about their individual projects than they would naturally do without the structured activities, but also that this was mostly limited to the structured activities we implemented. However, as the project progressed, we also observed a gradual trend in the students’ behavior towards bringing more (disciplinary) input. The students attributed this to a combination of the activities, gaining familiarity with, and confidence in, their own project, and a sense of familiarity and security within the team: “I think that it helps that we are few weeks further into the project than when we first presented our projects to each other. Back then we were really still in the start-up phase, so we were also not quite sure yet what we were going to do in our own project, and how we were going to use and structure our own concepts. [...] So, discussing it again with each other, when we were better informed ourselves, was really helpful to understand each other’s research better, and it also makes it easier to make connections between our projects” - S6 interview 3, week 13 So, we saw that we could stimulate status behavior with interventions, and that activities as well as further grounding in their own projects supported a general tendency towards gradually more status behavior. This helped restore a balance on this dialectic, enriching the conversations and creating increasing opportunities for conceptual integration. Figure 3 summarizes the dialectic, our operationalization of it, how tendencies to lean towards either end of the dialectic manifest themselves, and possible strategies that can be used to support teams to balance and unite the extremes of the dialectic. [insert figure 3 here] Dialectic 4: Individuality-Relationality In relation to the conceptual knowledge integration processes in our course, we consider this dialectic to apply to how the students navigated between ensuring the sovereignty of their individual projects and committing to the overarching joint project. Throughout the course, students both expressed and demonstrated that they struggled with the tension between their own individual projects and the joint project. They were motivated to contribute from their individual projects to the joint project, but also often did not know how to do so and were also afraid of losing their specificity. This made them feel insecure about their value to the team, and unsure whether the joint research project had been framed to fit their individual projects sufficiently. S6 put it as follows: “ The hardest thing is that we have such different projects. They are somewhat similar and they share a common topic, but everyone really has their own research in mind, […] and then it is difficult to make compromises, because you wonder whether you should let go a little bit more of your own project in favor of the joint project. [...] I got the impression that others also struggled with this, because they said: ‘maybe I can do this for the joint project, but for my own project I will do it differently ’” - S6 interview 3, week 13 This example shows how she experiences a paradox of making her own project valuable to the joint project, balancing adapting to the joint project –relationality– and staying true to her own project to maintain its uniqueness –individuality. S6’s framing of this as ‘compromises’ and ‘letting go of her project’ are telling of the tension that she seems to be experiencing. At the very end she suggests that some students responded to the perceived mismatch between their own individual project and the joint project by proposing that they adapt their own project to better fit the goals of the joint project. We also observed this in practice. In these cases, the students placed the joint project above the sovereignty of their own project and their unique (disciplinary) contribution, and they were thus biased towards the relational. In contrast, other students showed that they held a narrow and rigid understanding of their individual project, which they were unable and/or unwilling to translate to the joint project. As such, they tended towards the individuality end of the dialectic. For instance, S8 repeatedly expressed that she could not contribute to the project or to a particular aspect of the project, because the concepts from the joint project were not covered in her individual project. Both the overly individual and the overly relational prevented the students from capitalizing on the diversity of subprojects represented among them. Therefore, we encouraged the students to look beyond ‘similarities’ or ‘overlaps’ and to also reflect on how their projects related to each other considering other types of relationships than just alignment, such as cause-and-effect relationships between their projects and tensions or contradictions. We observed a link with dialectic 1, apprehension-comprehension. By encouraging the students to think more conceptually about their (individual as well as joint) projects, we saw that they were able to see connections at a decontextualized, conceptual level, while bringing in their project-specific, contextualized knowledge to support their findings with practical examples, data, and literature. This allowed them to act more relationally, without sacrificing the disciplinary specificity of their own projects. [insert figure 4 here] Overall, we saw that some students in our team tended towards the individual and others more towards the relational. Looking for connections at the conceptual rather than the practical level, and defining relationships beyond similarity, enabled them to find connections between their projects that they would not otherwise have seen, without glossing over or abandoning the specificities of their individual projects. The dialectic, its manifestations and possible strategies are summarized in Figure 4. Dialectic 5: Action-Reflection We understand action as the behaviors to work towards the end product of the course, their final report. Reflection, on the other hand, is the analysis of the process in order to distill lessons about how behavior can be adapted in other, similar contexts too. We follow Baker et al. (2005) in understanding this dialectic to manifest not so much in direct conversation, but rather in the larger context of the course. Throughout the course, we observed that the students were predominantly focused on completing their joint project and the course, and much less so on learning from and about the process of collaboration or integration. They seemed to focus on what they had to do, and not so much on the reasoning behind their teamwork. This manifested itself in a preoccupation with completing the report and the course, rather than taking responsibility for their own learning processes. We tried to counter this by being very explicit about the process orientation of the course and our intention to support the development of competencies such as integration and teamwork. But even when they were aware of this, students indicated that this was a challenge for them, among others because of what they were used to in their education. As S3 put it: “ [during the meetings] we have an expectation that what we say is either right or wrong, and we also wait for confirmation of that [...] the teacher teaches you something, that is the way things have always been. They tell you whether something is correct or incorrect, and they grade your exams. In this course I think it is different, but it is still the role that I take, of the student who needs to be told what is correct and what is incorrect, who needs to be told what to do ” - S3, interview 3, week 13 We also designed reflection exercises to encourage students to take control of their own learning. In particular, towards the end of the course (week 16), we instructed them to each develop a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) personal learning goal, and a protocol for a behavioral intervention that they would make to contribute to accomplishing their learning goal. They received feedback on their plans from us as teachers at least once –but more often than not twice or even a third time– before they could put them into practice. This need for guidance in itself is an indication of how challenging the exercise was for the students, as S6 also says in this example: “ I found it hard to recognize the moments when I was demonstrating that behavior [that I wanted to change], just as you had warned me in the feedback on my learning protocol: try to make it really SMART, make explicit how to identify these moments, otherwise they are hard to grasp. And even in the improved version [of the learning protocol, after teacher feedback] I still found it hard to make it specific [...] I do think in the last few meetings I sometimes thought: ‘oh, this might be a good moment to intervene’ ” - S6, interview 4, week 21 The examples demonstrate that it was challenging for the students to shape their own learning experiences, but it also shows that some increased awareness and self-guided learning could be stimulated by instruction, guidance and reflection exercises. [insert figure 5 here] We thus saw that the students tended to approach the course more as a task to be completed, than as an opportunity to learn about collaboration, teamwork, or integration. With support, the students seemed to be able to distill lessons that they could apply to other teamwork contexts. At the same time, however, this remained a challenge, and the students indicated that their previous educational experiences had shaped their expectations of receiving more outcome-oriented guidance. Figure 5 summarizes the dialectic. Discussion We conducted action research among a team of master’s students to investigate how conceptual knowledge integration occurred and could be supported in their interdisciplinary teamwork. We learned that the students’ work on our course was often less integrative than it appeared; they reached consensus ‘at surface level’. We argue that to avoid false senses of shared understanding and to enable integration ‘beyond the surface’, it is essential to engage in conceptual disambiguation . We use the term conceptual disambiguation to refer to the process of making the meaning of concepts explicit and exploring whether the concepts carry identical meanings in different disciplines, and if not, how –if at all– different concepts relate to each other, for example by overlapping, complementing, or opposing each other. Subsequently, we found that viewing conceptual knowledge integration through the lens of Baker et al.’s ( 2005 ) conversational learning theory was helpful in identifying and understanding the dynamics that interfere with conceptual disambiguation and integration, and in developing interventions to overcome these barriers. The observation that exploring, exchanging, and explaining different meanings is important for knowledge integration adds to the existing literature. The integration process as prescribed by Repko & Szostak ( 2021 ) – building on the work of Newell ( 2006 ) – takes the identification of conflicts as a first step. Newell ( 2006 , pp. 255–256) pointed out that these conflicts are precisely why integration is needed to create common ground, because in the absence of conflict the common ground would already be established, simply waiting to be discovered. He described the process of creating common ground as “ operative decisions [which] regard the extent and nature of the overlap in meaning (think Venn diagrams), and then the development of terminology that brings out the overlap in meaning, while acknowledging the areas of conflict.” (p. 256). This emphasizes the importance of thoroughly apprehending the differences and similarities in meaning between concepts or insights before manipulating terminology. With conceptual disambiguation we coined a dedicated concept to emphasize the process of making sense of the extent and nature of the overlap and difference in meaning among concepts. While Newell stressed this as a central process in creating common ground, in theory and practice of interdisciplinarity the focus seems to often be primarily on the second half of his definition: reaching consensus on shared terminologies. Klenk & Meehan ( 2015 ) referred to the focus on decisions and consensus as the “integration imperative”, when describing how a push for consensus may gloss over differences and silence minority voices in transdisciplinary research. Newell ( 2006 ) also recognized this tendency when he wrote: “ Integration […]is too often supposed [to consist] of putting together a jigsaw puzzle” (p.255). As we saw in our student team, rushing to make decisions can turn interdisciplinary work into a ‘naming game’ rather than a ‘framing game’. We therefore see our findings as an empirical enrichment and re-emphasis of the importance of disambiguation processes in conceptual integration, and thus argue for granting conceptual disambiguation more attention and legitimacy to be given to conceptual disambiguation in both theory and practice of interdisciplinary integration. Engaging in conceptual disambiguation means not only identifying conceptual overlaps, but also uncovering areas of conflict or incommensurabilities. Based on her own interdisciplinary research, van der Lecq ( 2011 ) complemented Repko & Szostak’s ( 2021 ) integration techniques that help resolve differences, with an additional strategy that uses difference. She coined this technique “ distinguishing ” and defined it as “ bring[ing] out the underlying uncommonality in meaning ” and discovering “ uncommon ground ” (p. 221). She showed that highlighting and substantiating the nature of conceptual differences supports the use of this conceptual distinction to answer her interdisciplinary research question. Understanding integration as a process of meaning-making that includes non-commonality departs from the etymological meaning of the term integration which centers around unification, wholeness, and integrity. Such an extension of the concept of integration beyond the consensual is also the position taken by Pohl et al. ( 2021 ), who consider consensus as one of several forms of integration and propose several alternatives to consensus. Others, however, argue for revaluing other forms of discipline-crossing (e.g. multidisciplinarity) to receive the same attention and appreciation as interdisciplinarity defined by integration (Mennes, 2020 ; Vereijken et al., 2022 ), for dissociating interdisciplinarity and integration (Lattuca, 2001 ), or for abandoning the term integration altogether (Holbrook, 2013 ). This raises fundamental questions about the relationship between integration, coherence, consensus, and interdisciplinarity, which are clearly highly controversial (Madsen, 2018 ). These questions are beyond the scope of this study, but need to be explored further in order to enable teachers and educational designers to critically reflect on and relate to different views of integration when taking it as a key aim and organizing principle in their interdisciplinary education. In terms of how conceptual disambiguation and integration can be facilitated, we found conversational learning theory to be a helpful framework. It helped us to recognize, understand, and address dynamics that hindered conceptual disambiguation and integration throughout the project. The context in which we conducted this study – following just one student team – was of course limited. Understanding how the principles we have described apply beyond our specific context and contexts directly similar to ours, both within and beyond higher education, requires further research. This includes other interdisciplinary educational contexts, but also other epistemically diverse contexts where integration challenges have been reported such as transdisciplinary research teams and cross-sector teams(Hoffmann et al., 2017 ; Karrasch et al., 2022 ; Ludwig & El-Hani, 2020 ; Yeo, 2020 ). Of particular interest could be how additional power imbalances (Fritz & Binder, 2020 ; Koskinen & Mäki, 2016 ) and conflicts of interests and values (Siebenhüner, 2018 ) affect the knowledge integration processes when additional diversity on other socio-psychological dimensions is introduced, such as career phase, different types of actors, and cultural and national differences. We expect that power imbalances are likely to primarily affect the status-solidarity dialectic, while conflicts and interests affect the individuality-relationality dialectic. However, this and the consequent implications for knowledge integration, remain to be explored. The dynamics of how the joint and individual projects were shaped in parallel and in interaction in our course was specific to our context in which the student team was formed with the individual projects being (partially) defined before the joint project was. We expect that this particularly affected the individuality-relationality dialectic. It remains to be investigated how this dialectic manifests and shapes integration and collaboration in collaborative designs that are more question- or issue-driven (Horn, Scheffelaar, et al., 2022 ; Robinson, 2008 ). However, we also expect the individuality-relationality dialectic to be at play when projects start out from a joint goal and vision. In addition to their overall goals, collaborative research projects must also fit the goals, agendas, research lines, interests, and preferences of the individuals involved. For example, in interdisciplinary research projects, project design and consortium composition may be driven by overarching issues and visions to which individual researchers subscribe to, but at the same time they usually have to deliver (predominantly) disciplinary PhD theses and publications (van Rijnsoever & Hessels, 2021 ). We therefore argue that the negotiation of work packages in large cross-disciplinary projects may exhibit similar dynamics in the individuality-relationality dialectic to what we observed in the negotiation of the individual and joint (sub-)projects in the context of our course. Whether and how this plays out in the context of such inter- and transdisciplinary research projects requires further research. Our findings have practical implications for interdisciplinary education practice. First, we see the importance of including the legitimacy of uncommonality and importance of disambiguation in the instruction about interdisciplinarity in order to convey a nuanced and complex understanding of interdisciplinarity and prevent instrumentality. In our study, we found that students were often focused primarily on discovering similarities or overlaps between their projects. This is consistent with previous reports that some students hold “jigsaw puzzle” like assumptions and expectations about what interdisciplinarity entails (Horn, Urias, et al., 2022). Emphasizing the importance of disambiguation processes and supporting students in engaging in disambiguation processes may support knowledge integration and prevent interdisciplinary processes from becoming ‘undisciplinary’ (Boix Mansilla, 2005 ; Haider et al., 2018 ). Second, our findings highlight the importance of explicitly supporting disambiguation and integration processes, which requires targeted activities and facilitation strategies that can be grounded in conversational learning theory. Integration is highly challenging, and thefore cannot be assumed to occur automatically (Brown et al., 2015 ; Hoffmann, Deutsch, et al., 2022 ; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022). Given the dialogical nature of the conversational learning dimensions (Baker et al., 2005 ), it should not be surprising that uniting seemingly contradicting behaviours proves challenging and that students therefore need support and training in doing so. We argue that supporting conceptual integration processes in interdisciplinary education requires a combination designing learning activities that target conversation learning a priori, and recognizing and adapting to team dynamics as collaboration unfolds. This requires an interactive teaching approach in which the teacher takes on the role of ‘guide by the side’ or even ‘meddler in the middle’ (McWilliam, 2009 ) rather than the more traditional ‘sage on the stage’ (King, 1993 ). In addition, it requires a reactive approach from teachers and therefore their adaptability, flexibility and creativity to adapt didactic and pedagogical approaches to classroom dynamics. We, therefore, argue for the further professionalization of interdisciplinary teaching, including the explicit rethinking of teachers’ roles, responsibilities and competencies, and the adaptation of support and training accordingly. Finally, we argue that viewing integration as a process of meaning-making, rather than as the pursuit of a maximally coherent end result, has implications for assessment. The observation that outputs may appear more integrated than they are, calls for the development of assessment tools that help distinguish between different levels of disambiguation and integration of end products. Perhaps a structured and large scale analysis of interdisciplinary student products could serve to build onto Mansilla’s (2009) work in which she developed rubrics to assess interdisciplinary integration by adding quality indicators for conceptual disambiguation. But if we argue that integration is a process in which we aim to train students, we might even ask ourselves whether education in which we (exclusively) assess products is constructively aligned (Biggs, 1996 ). This in turn raises the question of how assessment might be designed to assess the quality of the process. And even more radically, given our findings that extrinsic pressures can disrupt integration processes, it might raise the question of whether grading this process is desirable at all. However, taking such an ‘ungrading’ (Gorichanaz, 2024 ; Rapchak et al., 2023 ) stance may be challenging geven the prominence of extrinsic motivators such as deadlines, grades, and credits in our educational context (Baines et al., 2025 ; Chamberlin et al., 2023 ). Conclusions In this study, we aimed to gain further understanding of conceptual knowledge integration in interdisciplinary teamwork. We made two main contributions. First, we highlighted the importance of conceptual disambiguation as a key process in conceptual integration. This call for conceptual disambiguation was in response to the observation that, in its absence, collaboration can lead to un(der)informed decisions that are coherent but not shared; to integration at ‘surface level’. Second, we demonstrated the use of conversational learning theory to understand team dynamics in conceptual knowledge integration processes, identify bottlenecks, and develop targeted interventions to support integration ‘beyond the surface’. We argue that the dialectics described by Baker et al. ( 2005 ) and translated to the context of conceptual knowledge integration in this study, can support others when engaging in, supervising, facilitating, and training conceptual integration in interdisciplinary, and other epistemically diverse, teamwork. Our findings do not provide one concrete intervention, but rather guidelines for (1) identifying dynamics that may hinder conceptual integration; (2) understanding why dynamics may cause it to stall; and (3) providing a starting point for intervening in conceptual integration processes, with room for adaptation to different contexts. References Baines, S., Chauhan, S., & Otermans, P. C. J. (2025). 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The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd. Repko, A. F., & Szostak, R. (2017). Interdisciplinary research: Process and theory (Third edition). Sage. Repko, A. F., & Szostak, R. (2021). Interdisciplinary research: Process and theory (Fourth edition). SAGE. Robinson, J. (2008). Being undisciplined: Transgressions and intersections in academia and beyond. Futures , 40 (1), 70–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2007.06.007 Salazar, M. R., Lant, T. K., Fiore, S. M., & Salas, E. (2012). Facilitating Innovation in Diverse Science Teams Through Integrative Capacity. Small Group Research , 43 (5), 527–558. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496412453622 Siebenhüner, B. (2018). Conflicts in Transdisciplinary Research: Reviewing Literature and Analysing a Case of Climate Adaptation in Northwestern Germany. Ecological Economics , 154 , 117–127. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.07.011 Siedlok, F., & Hibbert, P. (2014). The Organization of Interdisciplinary Research: Modes, Drivers and Barriers. International Journal of Management Reviews , 16 (2), 194–210. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12016 Tsoukas, H. (2009). A Dialogical Approach to the Creation of New Knowledge in Organizations. Organization Science , 20 (6), 941–957. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1090.0435 van der Lecq, R. (2011). Why we talk: An interdisciplinary approach to the evolutionary origin of language. In A. F. Repko, R. Szostak, & W. Newell (Eds.), Case studies in interdisciplinary research (pp. 191–225). van Lambalgen, R., & van der Tuin, I. (2024). Teaching integration. In R. Szostak (Ed.), Handbook of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Administration (pp. 114–135). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035309870.00016 van Rijnsoever, F. J., & Hessels, L. K. (2021). How academic researchers select collaborative research projects: A choice experiment. The Journal of Technology Transfer , 46 (6), 1917–1948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-020-09833-2 Vereijken, M. W. C., Akkerman, S. F., te Pas, S. F., van der Tuin, I., & Kluijtmans, M. (2022). ‘Undisciplining’ higher education without losing disciplines: Furthering transformative potential for students. Higher Education Research & Development , 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2022.2156482 von Wehrden, H., Guimarães, M. H., Bina, O., Varanda, M., Lang, D. J., John, B., Gralla, F., Alexander, D., Raines, D., White, A., & Lawrence, R. J. (2019). Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research: Finding the common ground of multi-faceted concepts. Sustainability Science , 14 (3), 875–888. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0594-x Yeo, R. K. (2020). Crossing knowledge boundaries: From team learning to knowledge teams. Small Group Research , 51 (6), 700–737. Zanin, A. C., Kamrath, J. K., & Corman, S. R. (2020). Agentic Denial: How Athletic Teams Sustain Divergent Structures During Concussion Events. Small Group Research , 51 (3), 342–374. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496419883948 Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. 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Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-5931528","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":483070842,"identity":"aa3eb000-5b76-46df-90ea-8afdca194508","order_by":0,"name":"Annemarie Horn","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAhklEQVRIiWNgGAWjYFACHhBhAyIYD5CiJQ3MJEnLYRK08DfwHnxcueN84oYDvAeI0yJxgC/Z8OyZ20AtfAlEOuwAj5lkYxtIC48BcVrkIVrOkaDFAKLlAAlaDA/zGBs2tiUbzzxMrBa54z2GDxvb7GT7gIwHRGlhYMZgjIJRMApGwSigHAAA5bowEbtsJV8AAAAASUVORK5CYII=","orcid":"","institution":"Utrecht University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Annemarie","middleName":"","lastName":"Horn","suffix":""},{"id":483070843,"identity":"3512394f-f870-40b6-915d-9d73ec670ec9","order_by":1,"name":"Eduardo Urias","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Eduardo","middleName":"","lastName":"Urias","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-01-30 16:08:21","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":87072044,"identity":"24243deb-2652-4a14-ae80-afe0a0262f89","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 20:51:51","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":134372,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eApprehension \u0026lt; \u0026gt; Comprehension \u003c/strong\u003eSchematic representation of Dialectic 1 – Apprehension-Comprehension – providing operationalizations for the context of conceptual integration of the two extremes and the middle ground of the dialectic at the top, descriptions of the manifestations of team dynamics when leaning towards either extreme at the bottom corners, and strategies to help teams to move towards the constructive middle ground at the bottom center.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/c68b3428bea941c64d0bf437.png"},{"id":87072047,"identity":"f93dad42-0b9b-40db-8b88-4dd623d6bb66","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 20:51:51","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":171135,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEpistemological Discourse \u0026lt; \u0026gt; Ontological Recourse \u003c/strong\u003eSchematic representation of Dialectic 2 – Epistemological Discourse-Ontological Recourse – providing operationalizations to the context of conceptual integration of the two extremes and the middle ground of the dialectic at the top, descriptions of the manifestations of team dynamics when leaning towards either extreme at the bottom corners, and strategies to support teams \u0026nbsp;in moving towards the constructive middle ground at the bottom center.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/e37f805b4a2673df29710525.png"},{"id":87072048,"identity":"9c52f623-4791-4a24-899e-42fc7c1fb7b2","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 20:51:51","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":159536,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eStatus \u0026lt; \u0026gt; Solidarity \u003c/strong\u003eSchematic representation of Dialectic 3 – Status-Solidarity – providing operationalizations for the context of conceptual integration of the two extremes and the middle ground of the dialectic at the top, descriptions of the manifestations of team dynamics when leaning towards either extreme at the bottom corners, and strategies to support teams to move towards the constructive middle ground at the bottom center.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/793dbb58a92313fe6dc76c2e.png"},{"id":87072050,"identity":"3f9dd101-fc50-455f-8be1-a4002ee1f0b9","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 20:51:51","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":156879,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIndividuality \u0026lt; \u0026gt; Relationality \u003c/strong\u003eSchematic representation of Dialectic 4 – Individuality-Relationality – providing operationalizations to the context of conceptual integration of the two extremes and the middle ground of the dialectic at the top, descriptions of the manifestations of team dynamics when leaning towards either extreme at the bottom corners, and strategies to support teams to move towards the constructive middle ground at the bottom center.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/81cdaeb72467543d150dc717.png"},{"id":87072395,"identity":"39c22a01-b3af-482d-adb8-f27ea67b4d7c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 21:07:51","extension":"png","order_by":5,"title":"Figure 5","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":149131,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAction \u0026lt; \u0026gt; Reflection \u003c/strong\u003eSchematic representation of Dialectic 5 – Action-Reflection – providing operationalizations to the context of conceptual integration of the two extremes and the middle ground of the dialectic at the top, descriptions of the manifestations of team dynamics when leaning towards either extreme at the bottom corners, and strategies to support teams to move towards the constructive middle ground at the bottom center.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"5.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/a7e07f09f1766d0f170f6d59.png"},{"id":87072531,"identity":"0fa8dcb5-f6d0-452d-b225-2aecc6ffc7e6","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 21:15:52","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1701194,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/7dd7b452-a31b-4168-8fdc-82ba115d61f1.pdf"},{"id":87072045,"identity":"c2db52a7-79a0-43eb-8052-79277e621817","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-07-18 20:51:51","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":20598,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Supplementaryinformation.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-5931528/v1/2730ebd69b15af1a447d1f2d.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Integrating beyond the Surface: Conceptual Disambiguation and Conversational Learning for Shared Meaning-Making in Interdisciplinary Teamwork","fulltext":[{"header":"Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eA prominent premise of interdisciplinary collaboration is that a more comprehensive understanding of complex (societal) issues can be achieved when representatives of different academic disciplines bring together their knowledge (Klein, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR28\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e; Salazar et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR55\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). This goes beyond the representation of diverse expertises and knowledge bases in a team; it depends on the ability of teams to \u003cem\u003eintegrate\u003c/em\u003e insights from different fields to generate new understandings and to actively engage in the associated learning processes (Decuyper et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2010\u003c/span\u003e; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022; Repko \u0026amp; Szostak, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR52\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Knowledge integration is therefore seen as key to realizing the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration and is considered a defining characteristic of interdisciplinarity, distinguishing it from other forms of discipline-crossing, such as multidisciplinarity (Klein, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR29\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). Consequently, knowledge integration to reach a more comprehensive understanding is often sought in interdisciplinary research efforts (Pennington, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR47\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Siedlok \u0026amp; Hibbert, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR57\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2014\u003c/span\u003e) and is often pursued in interdisciplinary education as to train individuals in integration competencies, with the aim of preparing individuals to address complex (societal) issues (Ivanitskaya et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2002\u003c/span\u003e; Oudenampsen et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR46\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; van Lambalgen \u0026amp; van der Tuin, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR61\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn addition to the widely recognized importance of knowledge integration for interdisciplinary collaboration, it is also considered one of its greatest challenges. It is reported that even when knowledge integration is pursued, it is often not (fully) achieved (Boix Mansilla et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR7\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022; L\u0026eacute;l\u0026eacute; \u0026amp; Norgaard, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR35\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e). Moreover, diverse teams may face power imbalances and hierarchies that lead to interpretation monopolies if they do not negotiate their understanding (Bergmann, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e). In response to these challenges, it has been argued that knowledge integration require targeted methods and tools (Bammer et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR3\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Bergmann, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR4\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e; Hoffmann, Weber, et al., 2022) and structured facilitation of integration processes (Defila \u0026amp; Di Giulio, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR12\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Hoffmann, Weber, et al., 2022) to reap the benefits of epistemic diversity in interdisciplinary teamwork.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe existing literature provides concrete handles on how to facilitate and train knowledge integration with countless tools, integrative methods, and interventions that have been developed, applied, described, and studied. Here we just name a few as an illustration. The Dialogue Toolbox Initiative has developed workshop formats to stimulate dialogue about the underlying value systems that team members bring to interdisciplinary teamwork and to engage teams in co-creation activities (O\u0026rsquo;Rourke et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR45\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; O\u0026rsquo;Rourke \u0026amp; Crowley, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR44\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). The CoNavigator tool provides workshop formats and materials to stimulate integrative brainstorming in which individuals exchange (disciplinary) insights and engage in conversations about how their insights relate to each other (Lindvig et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR36\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e). And in their book, Repko \u0026amp; Szostak (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) provide a methodology for knowledge integration in which interdisciplinary endeavors (which may or may not be collaborative) go through a series of steps, first identifying conflicts between disciplinary contributions, and then addressing these conflicts by using a set of approaches \u0026ndash;integration techniques\u0026ndash; to create new concepts and relationships.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhile these tools and methods are concrete, knowledge integration is also understood as a complex, open-ended, contextual, and plural phenomenon. Two \u0026lsquo;metatheories\u0026rsquo; by O\u0026rsquo;Rourke et al.(2016) and Pohl et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) have attempted to bring together the wealth of definitions and conceptualizations of integration. Both have in common that they understand integration as the process of establishing new relationships between previously unrelated components. In addition, they both emphasize the diversity of practices captured by the term. O\u0026rsquo;Rourke et al (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) outline the heterogeneity in terms of which epistemic elements are being integrated, the scale at which integration takes place, the degree of commensurability, the comprehensiveness of integration, and the types of integrative relations that are created. Pohl et al (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) add to this whether integration takes place within a single individual or between multiple individuals, and whether it is unidirectional or mutual. This thus demonstrates the heterogeneity of practices captured by the term integration.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSuch broad conceptualizations and frameworks are essential for comprehensively defining what we do and do not mean when we use the term integration. Yet, all-encompassing conceptualizations provide limited insight into \u003cem\u003ehow\u003c/em\u003e integration emerges or can be facilitated in specific situations. Conversely, descriptions of interventions, methods and tools, provide concrete insights and guidance for practice, but it is often difficult to transfer their lessons to contexts where other methods are deployed. In this study, we do not provide new methods or tools for interdisciplinary knowledge integration, but instead we set out to identify principles that govern integration processes beyond a single interaction or intervention. We argue that such principles complement the existing literature by finding a middle ground between the decontextualized nature of large metatheories and the contextualized nature of specific interventions.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn line with cautions against understanding integration mechanistically (Laursen \u0026amp; O\u0026rsquo;Rourke, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR34\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e), we argue that grappling with the \u0026lsquo;how\u0026rsquo; of knowledge integration is highly challenging \u0026ndash;if not impossible\u0026ndash; when considering integration in the full complexity and heterogeneity that we have outlined above. We have therefore narrowed down the focus of our study. We take the metatheories described earlier (O\u0026rsquo;Rourke et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR43\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Pohl et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) as descriptions of heterogeneity through which to make sense of forms and contexts of knowledge integration. On this basis, we have narrowed down the focus of our study to one particular form of knowledge integration for which we aim to gain insight into \u0026lsquo;how\u0026rsquo; it occurs and can be facilitated: the \u003cb\u003eintegration\u003c/b\u003e of \u003cb\u003econcepts\u003c/b\u003e (and their understandings and relationships) that takes place \u003cb\u003ein interactions between two or more individuals\u003c/b\u003e in a team and manifests as the \u003cb\u003edevelopment of novel (for the team) conceptual understandings\u003c/b\u003e and terminologied that the whole team commits to for the purpose of the joint project. From now on we refer to \u003cem\u003econceptual integration.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn the following sections we describe our action research study of the conceptual integration process in a team of students engaging in interdisciplinary teamwork. We distill principles that helped us to recognize, understand, and address bottlenecks for conceptual integration. These principles fall into two categories: first, we identify the lack of \u0026lsquo;conceptual disambiguation\u0026rsquo; as a general pitfall when engaging in conceptual integration, and second, we use conversational learning theory to zoom in on specific dynamics that impair conceptual disambiguation and integration and possible strategies to overcome these dynamics.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Methods","content":"\u003cp\u003eTo further understand how conceptual knowledge integration processes emerge and can be facilitated and trained, we used a multi-method action research approach to study interdisciplinary knowledge integration processes in a student team. We made observations during weekly team meetings with the students and conducted interviews. In line with the action research approach (Reason \u0026amp; Bradbury, 2012), we did this in a continuous process of designing, implementing, reflecting on, and revising the course activities and supervision approach. This allowed us to closely study the dynamics and experiment with interventions and strategies, to test assumptions and to gain insight into possible strategies to support the integration processes.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe worked closely with the students for a period of five months which allowed us to build a relationship of trust (Dosemagen \u0026amp; Schwalbach, 2019) and to gather insights on a large number of instances and in different contexts using different methods (Erro-Garc\u0026eacute;s \u0026amp; Alfaro-Tanco, 2020). Combining observations from team meetings and interviews allowed for methodological and data triangulation, to increase the reliability of our findings (Korstjens \u0026amp; Moser, 2018). Our approach also meant that we had dual roles as educators and researchers. We separated and explicitly communicated our roles to the students, to minimize role ambiguity and -interference. The first author was the primary researcher, taking field notes and conducting the interviews, while merely providing support in supervision and teaching. She had no formal role in grading the students\u0026rsquo; work. In contrast, the second author was the primary teacher and assessor, keeping a distance from the data collection and analysis, while he supervised the research in more general terms.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eStudy Context\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe collected our data in the context of the 2021 offering of the master\u0026rsquo;s course \u003cem\u003e[Course name]\u003c/em\u003e\u003ca href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\" title=\"\"\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003csup\u003e[1]\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. This is a course that students from any master\u0026rsquo;s program at our university can take voluntarily as an extracurricular activity, or \u0026ndash;depending on the regulations of their own program\u0026ndash; as an elective course within their master\u0026rsquo;s curriculum. The course runs in parallel to students\u0026rsquo; individual graduation projects \u0026nbsp;(e.g., thesis or research-oriented internship) in which they conduct (empirical) research that meets the formal requirements of their own master\u0026rsquo;s programs, covering topics and using methods appropriate to their field of study. For [name of the course], students with individual projects on related topics work together to integrate the insights from their individual projects and produce a joint report on a larger societal issue. The team we followed in this study, worked on the topic \u0026lsquo;Circular Economy\u0026rsquo;.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe course ran for 21 consecutive weeks from February to June 2021, with weekly meetings lasting one to two hours. As COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures were in place for the entire during of the course, all meetings took place online via Zoom. This setting in which the disciplinary subprojects are already (partially) defined prior to negotiating the joint project, contrasts with \u0026lsquo;question-driven\u0026rsquo; interdisciplinarity (Horn, Scheffelaar, et al., 2022), in which a large research question forms the starting point for assembling a team and defining more specific (more disciplinary) research questions, as used, for example, in the IGERT graduate program (Bosque-P\u0026eacute;rez et al., 2016). This specific research context shaped our findings. We provided thick descriptions of our observations and juxtaposed them with our interpretations, in order to enable readers to assess the relevance of our findings to their own contexts, thereby supporting transferability (Korstjens \u0026amp; Moser, 2018).\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp; \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;To facilitate conceptual knowledge integration, the students developed an integrative theoretical framework (Bergmann, 2012) of their joint project. Throughout the course, they gradually and iteratively developed a visual representation of the concepts and connections relevant to their project, based on the literature, the concepts, frameworks and empirical data from their individual projects. This representation served as a boundary object for negotiating shared understandings (Pennington, 2016; von Wehrden et al., 2019). We implemented learning activities in order to support the development of their integrative theoretical framework, such as presenting the concepts and frameworks from their individual projects to each other, developing of definitions of concepts, questioning and substantiating concepts and their connections, joint coding of data, and presenting preliminary findings to each other. In line with the action research approach, we designed some of these activities prior to the start of the course, and implemented others in response to the team processes and needs that we observed or that the students indicated. As the course progressed, the balance shifted towards a more reactive approach, as their needs became more specific and our understanding of the dynamics and challenges in our team advanced. In the Supplementary Materials, we provide a detailed outline of the course activities per week, distinguishing between planned and reactively implemented activities.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eParticipants\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor this study, we followed a student team consisting of eight students. All eight students in the team participated in the study. The students were enrolled in diverse master\u0026rsquo;s programs: Work and Organizational Psychology (2); Business Administration, Digital Business Innovation; Environment and Resource Management; Food Innovation and Healthy Food Policy; Science and Technology Policy; and Management, Policy Analysis, and Entrepreneurship in the Health and Life Sciences. They brought varying background knowledge, experience, and projects, including varying degrees of disciplinary specialization.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eData Collection\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe collected observational data, interview data, written student reflections, and recordings of the weekly meetings. The first author kept a reflective observational journal during the weekly team meetings. In line with the action research approach, the observations were guided by questions that we updated during the study, based on reflections of both authors. We recorded the team meetings in order to be able to revisit specific conversations.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn weeks 3, 7, 13, and 21, the first author conducted individual interviews with all students. These interviews lasted approximately one hour, took place via Zoom, and were conducted in either Dutch (4/8 students) or English (4/8 students), depending on the student\u0026rsquo;s preference. The interviews were semi-structured and followed topic lists that we defined together between both authors, based on the observations and reflections. In the first interview we aimed to capture the students\u0026rsquo; starting points in terms of expectations, disciplinary views, and prior knowledge and competencies; in the second, their experiences with their different disciplinary perspectives in the first phase of the teamwork; in the third, their experiences with the teamwork as their projects progressed; and in the fourth, their experiences throughout the entire collaboration process. We recorded the interviews and transcribed them verbatim.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn weeks 1- 9, 11, 16, 17, 19, and 21, the students completed written reflection exercises covering several topics, including: their own disciplinary background and underlying assumptions, their views and expectations of interdisciplinarity, the competencies they needed and developed in the process, and how they experienced the collaboration. These reflection exercises were primarily for pedagogical purposes, but we have also included them as research data in this study. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eData Analysis\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn analyzing the data, we first took an abductive reasoning approach, where a surprising observation that did not match our expectations guided our analysis \u0026nbsp;(Mantere \u0026amp; Ketokivi, 2013; Zanin et al., 2020). In the interactions with the students, we were surprised that their decisions towards an integrative theoretical framework were often characterized by consensus, but not by shared reconceptualization (as described by Newell, 2006; Repko \u0026amp; Szostak, 2021) or the creation new relationships between previously unrelated concepts (Pohl et al., 2021). Even when they appeared to have reached shared understanding \u0026ndash;as was implied by a decision to include or not include certain concepts, to merge several terms into a single concept, or to (not) link up two or more concepts in their map\u0026ndash; this often turned out to not signify shared understanding, as was later revealed when a \u0026lsquo;false sense of shared understanding\u0026rsquo; was exposed. The insights that followed from those observations are described in the first part of the Results Section. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn order to define principles that helped us recognize, understand and address bottlenecks for conceptual integration, we proceeded the analysis deductively. The important role for dialogic interactions that we observed in our student team and in the literature (O\u0026rsquo;Rourke et al., 2020; Piso et al., 2016; Tsoukas, 2009), led us to consult Baker et al.\u0026rsquo;s (2005) Conversational Learning Theory to make sense of the interactions in our team. Baker et al \u003ca href=\"https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?Arx1O0\"\u003e(2005)\u003c/a\u003e coined five dialectics which we operationalized for our context of conceptual integration. The second part of the results section is structured around these five dialectics and includes the operationalization to our context.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eEthics\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll students participated in the study on a voluntary basis. They gave written informed consent for their date to be used for scientific research. They could withdraw from the study at any time, and their decision whether or not to participate in the study, did not affect their ability to participate in the course, or for their relationship with the teaching/research team. They were explicitly informed of this. In order to ensure the confidentiality of the participants, we report the findings anonymously, avoiding identifiable information such as gender, nationality, study background, or the topics of their individual projects in relation to specific examples and quotes from the data. The Ethics Committee of the Science Faculty of [university censored] exempted the project that this study was part of from ethical clearance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\" title=\"\"\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003csup\u003e[1]\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\u003c/a\u003e For more information about the design of the [name of the course] and its institutional embedding have been described in more detail by, we direct readers to [censored reference #1].\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Findings","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAt Surface Level: Assumed Shared Understanding\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile supervising the student team, we noticed that they often made quick decisions about their integrative theoretical framework, with little or no substantiation in the form of examples or arguments. In a number of cases, it became apparent later in the collaboration that these agreements were in fact un(-der-)substantiated. This happened when the students found out that they had different understandings of concepts, definitions or relationships that they previously thought to share. We consider those moments of realization to expose a \u0026lsquo;false sense of shared understanding\u0026rsquo;. In those instances, their work \u003cem\u003eappeared\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eto be\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eintegrated because they used identical terminology and agreed on the choice or definition of concepts or relationships between concepts. But it turned out that they did not share the same \u003cem\u003eunderstanding\u003c/em\u003e of the underlying \u003cem\u003emeaning\u003c/em\u003e of concepts or the relationships between concepts. We take cases where a false shared understanding was exposed to mean that the previous shared understanding was un(der)substantiated. This, in turn, we take to signify that at that earlier point in time they had not engaged sufficiently in shared meaning-making to arrive at a shared understanding beyond shared decisions and shared terminology.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne instance where we observed exposure of a false shared understanding among our students, occurred in meeting 16. The students engaged in joint coding of interview data from individual projects with the concepts from their integrative theoretical framework. During the meeting, the students (in parallel, in the two groups) went through the interview transcript together and compared and discussed their codings. The following quote from our observational journal provides an example of an instance where a false sense of shared understanding about one of the concepts in their integrative theoretical framework was exposed:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e[S6] coded a part of the interview which is about how the respondent sees herself as \u0026ldquo;perceived personality\u0026rdquo;. [S5] jumps in to explain that in her research (which is where the concept comes from) perceived personality refers to the personality of the product, not of the consumer. [...] This reaches [S6], as she says she now has more clarity about what is meant by the concept [...] but I find it striking that apparently it didn\u0026rsquo;t land with her before, despite having worked with the concept and with [S5] for over three months.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e- Observational journal week 16\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis example shows that the concept of \u0026lsquo;perceived personality\u0026rsquo; appeared to be an outcome of integration on the surface level, because it was part of the theoretical framework that the students created together and to which they had all committed. The students believed that they had reached shared understanding of the concepts and relationships in their integrative theoretical framework. However, on closer inspection, when they started to apply it to specific pieces of data, it became clear that although they were using the same \u003cem\u003eterm\u003c/em\u003e, they had not reached a shared conceptual \u003cem\u003eunderstanding\u003c/em\u003e. Instead, they each had a different understanding of the concept, even though they thought they were on the same page among its meaning. This shows that the conceptual map appeared to be more synthesized than the underlying understanding was.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe take this observation as an indication that differences in understanding left were implicit, which stood in the way of developing a shared understanding for conceptual integration. We argue that this demonstrates the need to make the differences in understanding explicit and therefore calls for \u0026lsquo;conceptual disambiguation\u0026rsquo;. It is important to note that by disambiguating we refer to resolving \u003cem\u003eambiguities\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash;openness to different interpretations or meanings\u0026ndash; and not to resolving \u003cem\u003edifferences\u003c/em\u003e. Differences are key to interdisciplinary collaboration and should be used to take advantage of epistemic diversity. We argue that conceptual integration requires that these differences be made. Leaving these differences implicit leaves openness for different understandings \u0026ndash;ambiguity\u0026ndash; which may be at the root of false senses of shared understanding. Once the different understandings are made explicit, exchanged and explained among team members, this opens up the possibility of assessing their relationships and commensurability and possibly negotiating a shared understanding (for the purpose and in the context of the joint work). We, therefore, see conceptual disambiguation as an essential process for conceptual integration.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003eConversational Learning to Go beyond the Surface\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, we recognized that our student team often did not engage sufficiently in conceptual disambiguation, leading to false senses of shared understanding and thereby sidelining their integrative efforts. We continued our quest to understand how we could recognize and address dynamics that were interfering with their integration processes. In Conversational Learning Theory (Baker et al., 2005) we found a useful framework for understanding and managing the dynamics in our student team. It describes five process dialectics, navigating of which opens up a conversational learning space. The dialectical nature means that they consider shared understanding as being achieved through the interplay of (apparent) opposites, navigating which involves balancing and uniting these tensions \u003ca href=\"https://www.zotero.org/google-docs/?M3GYRL\"\u003e(Baker et al., 2005)\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the following subsections we describe how the dialectics helped us to make sense of the dynamics that we observed in our team and how navigating them could be achieved and used to support team integration processes.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e1. Apprehension-Comprehension\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the context of conceptual integration, we understand apprehension and comprehension to show in the substantiations and argumentations that students provide for the decisions, such as the selection or definition of concepts or their relationships. In defining concepts and substantiating conceptual relationships, we saw that the students drew on conceptual, abstract understandings (comprehension), or used vivid everyday examples and explanations (apprehension). We observed that the students in our team generally leaned more towards the apprehension, than comprehension. Conversations were often dominated by everyday examples and popular understanding, while conceptual contributions were relatively rare.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor example, in the meeting in week 3 we instructed the students to look for connections between their individual projects. We observed that they tended to look for links at a practical level, such as studying the same sector (e.g. fashion), waste stream (e.g. food waste), or research population (e.g. consumers), but not so much at a conceptual level. S1 said the following: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eif [S6] decides to also work on food waste, we may have a link there\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;, implying that she only sees a connection between their work if they are studying the same application area, rather than also considering sharing key concepts or theories.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn response to this observation, we tried to counteract this tendency and to encourage more conceptual conversations. In week 8, we instructed the students to share the concepts and frameworks that they used for their individual projects, and to use these to develop a joint conceptual representation. We saw that the students engaged in more conceptual discussions. However, several students expressed that they found this phase of the project unmotivating, vague, and difficult. We see this as an indication that the move towards the conceptual went against the students\u0026rsquo; natural tendencies, but we also think that this may be due to the fact that these conversations overshot in the opposite direction; the abstract conversation existed in a conceptual vacuum, and became disconnected from examples and application.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen we began to implement interventions to link the practical and the conceptual, we found that new insights emerged from the conversations, and the students experienced revelations, identifying new relationships, or rethinking the relationships between, or definitions of concepts. For example, in week 12, we instructed the students to critically question decisions they had previously made in their framework, such as the decision to link two concepts, to link them in a particular direction, or the absence of links between two concepts. We instructed them to answer these questions about the concepts and relationships in their framework by providing concrete examples, from their research data or practical experience. In introducing the exercise, one of us teachers gave an example of how laws and regulations can play a role in consumer food choices. This seemed to strike a chord with S1, and during that meeting she began to make connections that she had not seen before. She confirmed that this moment was transformative for her:\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;[the teacher] suggested that my project was related to laws and regulations, by giving a very practical example, I found that very useful.\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e(S1, interview 3, week 13). \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the example at the beginning of this Findings Section, a false sense of shared understanding was exposed when students engaged in joint coding of interview data. This is also an activity in which they moved back and forth between, and connected, the concrete \u0026ndash;examples and experiences from a respondent\u0026ndash; and the abstract \u0026ndash;the concepts from their integrative theoretical framework. S6 said the following about this interaction:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;We had agreed on certain concepts with each other, but there turned out to be differences in how we understood and operationalized them. These differences came to light when we discussed the results, because in interviews they can manifest themselves just slightly differently. So when we were discussing the data, those differences were highlighted, which allowed us to ask better questions about the framework\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e - S6 interview 4, week 21\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, in this exercise, they navigated the apprehension-comprehension dialectic, which helped to expose false senses of shared understanding and thus helped them move beyond the surface in their conceptual integration process.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[insert figure 1 here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, we found that the students in our course tended towards the practical or concrete \u0026ndash;apprehension\u0026ndash; rather than the conceptual or abstract \u0026ndash;comprehension. Interventions to shift them towards the conceptual succeeded in stimulating more conceptual conversations, but ran the risk of causing a disconnect from the practical. Once they began to actively and continuously connect the abstract and the practical, falsely assumed agreements and misunderstandings were exposed and new insights emerged that helped to create a shared understanding and to negotiate their integrative theoretical framework at a level of meaning. Figure 1 summarizes of our operationalization of the dialectic in the context of conceptual integration in interdisciplinary teamwork, the manifestations of team or individual functioning when overshooting towards either end, and possible interventions to guide conversations towards balancing and uniting both ends of the dialectic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDialectic 2: Epistemological Discourse-Ontological Recourse\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe understand this dialectic as describing the processes of making decisions about definitions of, and relationships between concepts (naming, epistemological discourse) and of questioning and reconsidering definitions and relationships by analyzing their meaning (framing, ontological recourse). Throughout the project, we observed that when the students in our course engaged in defining their project and research questions, they tended towards naming rather than framing. They preferred linear progress to rethinking and questioning the choices they had made or were making. The following example illustrates this tendency from as student\u0026rsquo;s perspective:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eIt\u0026rsquo;s easier to go for a quick fix [...] as a group we do that a lot, we try not to do things slowly and think about it a lot. [...] for example when we decide on our research question. The first time it was like: \u0026lsquo;Oh! This is the one!\u0026rsquo;, we didn\u0026rsquo;t think about it a lot.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e - S7, interview 3, week 13\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn response to this tendency, we implemented interventions to stimulate framing behavior. For instance, we encouraged the students to question their integral theoretical framework throughout the course, and instructed them to consider the mind map and research questions as tentative throughout their project. We, as teachers, also asked many questions ourselves, aimed at opening up discussion and introducing recursive loops. But when we tried to initiate a recursive movement in the students\u0026rsquo; conversational process, they tended to respond in more recursively. For example, when we questioned the decisions the students had made in formulating their research question, their reflex was to substitute one word for another, rather than to more fundamentally examine the aim and framing of their research. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe observed a recursive-discursive dynamic that produced new insights as the students began to write. By putting down on paper the thoughts and ideas that they had discussed repeatedly, they committed themselves to certain relationships, but they also questioned themselves and each other about definitions and relationships. While gaps or inconsistencies in their reasoning may have remained hidden in conversation, they were exposed when they started writing. These exposed \u0026lsquo;plot holes\u0026rsquo; were the starting point for renewed conversations to further develop their understanding of the topic, to work together on what they meant\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;and\u003c/em\u003e how they phrased\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003eit. As one student put it:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eWe held each other accountable, like: \u0026lsquo;we decided this before, but does it add up?\u0026rsquo; [...] When we started to put the story down on paper, we found out that there were gaps that needed to be filled in. [...] I think that this is partly inherent in the writing phase, but also that we were able to address these gaps because we had worked on them so much in the course. It had become easier to ask questions and find out what issue needed to be addressed.\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo;- S3 interview 4, week 21\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, we saw that the students in our course had a strong tendency towards epistemological recourse. Although this tendency prevailed throughout the course, towards the end, when they were writing up their work and the lessons and examples from the course came together, they began to demonstrate more ontological recourse dynamics as well. Figure 2 summarizes our operationalization, the tendencies to overshoot to either end of the spectrum and possible interventions to help balance and unite both ends of the dialectic. \u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[insert figure 2 here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDialectic 3: Status-Solidarity\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the context of conceptual integration, we understand the third dialectic as the confidence and assertiveness to contribute insights and knowledge from one\u0026rsquo;s own disciplinary perspective \u0026ndash;status\u0026ndash;, and the openness and humility to consider and engage with the contributions of others and to adapt flexibly to one\u0026rsquo;s teammates \u0026ndash;solidarity. In earlier work in the same context, we conceptualized this as taking on the role of expert and non-expert, respectively [reference censored].\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn general, we saw that the students in our team were leaning strongly towards the solidarity end of the dialectic and ran the risk of stepping into the pitfall that Baker et al. (2005) described as aimlessness and repetitiveness, because no one took the lead or took a strong stance. At the very end of the project, S4 looked back on their dynamic and described it as follows:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;For quite a while I felt that we were going round in circles, that we kept discussing the same things without making any progress. [...] I think that nobody in the group really knew the best way to go about it, and that everybody was just fine however it went. We would leave it to others to make decisions, but they didn\u0026rsquo;t know either and so it just kept going back and forth\u0026rdquo;\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e- S4, interview 4, week 21\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere were, however, also a few individuals in the team who were more likely to speak up when decisions needed to be made or when we asked for input, thus demonstrating more status behavior. S2, for instance, was often one of the first to speak up. She found that her teammates were often more reluctant to contribute, creating an imbalance that gave disproportionate weight to her contributions, without that being her intention:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eI don\u0026rsquo;t mean to tell them what we should do, I also want to learn something from them. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t work if I suggest something and the others accept that without a question asked [...] because then \u0026nbsp;the project just becomes my research project\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; - S2 interview 3, week 13\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn order to prevent this dynamic, and to encourage the team and its members towards uniting solidarity and status behaviors, we stimulated the students explicitly to make knowledge contributions. For example, at the very beginning of the collaboration we had the students present their individual projects to each other. This first round of presentations was part of the initial design of the course, but in response to the tendency towards solidarity we decided to implement additional activities in which they had to share insights from their individual projects. This included presenting their concepts and frameworks to each other in the meeting in week 8, sharing concepts and frameworks in writing in week 12, and presenting findings from their individual projects in week 18. We found that these activities prompted the students to share more about their individual projects than they would naturally do without the structured activities, but also that this was mostly limited to the structured activities we implemented. However, as the project progressed, we also observed a gradual trend in the students\u0026rsquo; behavior towards bringing more (disciplinary) input. The students attributed this to a combination of the activities, gaining familiarity with, and confidence in, their own project, and a sense of familiarity and security within the team:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u0026ldquo;I think that it helps that we are few weeks further into the project than when we first presented our projects to each other. Back then we were really still in the start-up phase, so we were also not quite sure yet what we were going to do in our own project, and how we were going to use and structure our own concepts. [...] So, discussing it again with each other, when we were better informed ourselves, was really helpful to understand each other\u0026rsquo;s research better, and it also makes it easier to make connections between our projects\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e - S6 interview 3, week 13\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, we saw that we could stimulate status behavior with interventions, and that activities as well as further grounding in their own projects supported a general tendency towards gradually more status behavior. This helped restore a balance on this dialectic, enriching the conversations and creating increasing opportunities for conceptual integration. Figure 3 summarizes the dialectic, our operationalization of it, how tendencies to lean towards either end of the dialectic manifest themselves, and possible strategies that can be used to support teams to balance and unite the extremes of the dialectic.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[insert figure 3 here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDialectic 4: Individuality-Relationality\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn relation to the conceptual knowledge integration processes in our course, we consider this dialectic to apply to how the students navigated between ensuring the sovereignty of their individual projects and committing to the overarching joint project. Throughout the course, students both expressed and demonstrated that they struggled with the tension between their own individual projects and the joint project. They were motivated to contribute from their individual projects to the joint project, but also often did not know how to do so and were also afraid of losing their specificity. This made them feel insecure about their value to the team, and unsure whether the joint research project had been framed to fit their individual projects sufficiently. S6 put it as follows:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eThe hardest thing is that we have such different projects. They are somewhat similar and they share a common topic, but everyone really has their own research in mind, [\u0026hellip;] and then it is difficult to make compromises, because you wonder whether you should let go a little bit more of your own project in favor of the joint project. [...] I got the impression that others also struggled with this, because they said: \u0026lsquo;maybe I can do this for the joint project, but for my own project I will do it differently\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; - S6 interview 3, week 13\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis example shows how she experiences a paradox of making her own project valuable to the joint project, balancing adapting to the joint project \u0026ndash;relationality\u0026ndash; and staying true to her own project to maintain its uniqueness \u0026ndash;individuality. S6\u0026rsquo;s framing of this as \u0026lsquo;compromises\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;letting go of her project\u0026rsquo; are telling of the tension that she seems to be experiencing.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the very end she suggests that some students responded to the perceived mismatch between their own individual project and the joint project by proposing that they adapt their own project to better fit the goals of the joint project. We also observed this in practice. In these cases, the students placed the joint project above the sovereignty of their own project and their unique (disciplinary) contribution, and they were thus biased towards the relational. In contrast, other students showed that they held a narrow and rigid understanding of their individual project, which they were unable and/or unwilling to translate to the joint project. As such, they tended towards the individuality end of the dialectic. For instance, S8 repeatedly expressed that she could not contribute to the project or to a particular aspect of the project, because the concepts from the joint project were not covered in her individual project.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBoth the overly individual and the overly relational prevented the students from capitalizing on the diversity of subprojects represented among them. Therefore, we encouraged the students to look beyond \u0026lsquo;similarities\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;overlaps\u0026rsquo; and to also reflect on how their projects related to each other considering other types of relationships than just alignment, such as cause-and-effect relationships between their projects and tensions or contradictions. We observed a link with dialectic 1, apprehension-comprehension. By encouraging the students to think more conceptually about their (individual as well as joint) projects, we saw that they were able to see connections at a decontextualized, conceptual level, while bringing in their project-specific, contextualized knowledge to support their findings with practical examples, data, and literature. This allowed them to act more relationally, without sacrificing the disciplinary specificity of their own projects.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[insert figure 4 here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, we saw that some students in our team tended towards the individual and others more towards the relational. Looking for connections at the conceptual rather than the practical level, and defining relationships beyond similarity, enabled them to find connections between their projects that they would not otherwise have seen, without glossing over or abandoning the specificities of their individual projects. The dialectic, its manifestations and possible strategies are summarized in Figure 4.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eDialectic 5: Action-Reflection\u0026nbsp;\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe understand action as the behaviors to work towards the end product of the course, their final report. Reflection, on the other hand, is the analysis of the process in order to distill lessons about how behavior can be adapted in other, similar contexts too. We follow Baker et al. (2005) in understanding this dialectic to manifest not so much in direct conversation, but rather in the larger context of the course. Throughout the course, we observed that the students were predominantly focused on completing their joint project and the course, and much less so on learning from and about the process of collaboration or integration. They seemed to focus on what they had to do, and not so much on the reasoning behind their teamwork. This manifested itself in a preoccupation with completing the report and the course, rather than taking responsibility for their own learning processes. We tried to counter this by being very explicit about the process orientation of the course and our intention to support the development of competencies such as integration and teamwork. But even when they were aware of this, students indicated that this was a challenge for them, among others because of what they were used to in their education. As S3 put it:\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003e[during the meetings] we have an expectation that what we say is either right or wrong, and we also wait for confirmation of that [...] the teacher teaches you something, that is the way things have always been. They tell you whether something is correct or incorrect, and they grade your exams. In this course I think it is different, but it is still the role that I take, of the student who needs to be told what is correct and what is incorrect, who needs to be told what to do\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; - S3, interview 3, week 13\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe also designed reflection exercises to encourage students to take control of their own learning. In particular, towards the end of the course (week 16), we instructed them to each develop a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) personal learning goal, and a protocol for a behavioral intervention that they would make to contribute to accomplishing their learning goal. They received feedback on their plans from us as teachers\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eat least once \u0026ndash;but more often than not twice or even a third time\u0026ndash; before they could put them into practice. This need for guidance in itself is an indication of how challenging the exercise was for the students, as S6 also says in this example:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eI found it hard to recognize the moments when I was demonstrating that behavior [that I wanted to change], just as you had warned me in the feedback on my learning protocol: try to make it really SMART, make explicit how to identify these moments, otherwise they are hard to grasp. And even in the improved version [of the learning protocol, after teacher feedback] I still found it hard to make it specific [...] I do think in the last few meetings I sometimes thought: \u0026lsquo;oh, this might be a good moment to intervene\u0026rsquo;\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; - S6, interview 4, week 21\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe examples demonstrate that it was challenging for the students to shape their own learning experiences, but it also shows that some increased awareness and self-guided learning could be stimulated by instruction, guidance and reflection exercises.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[insert figure 5 here]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe thus saw that the students tended to approach the course more as a task to be completed, than as an opportunity to learn about collaboration, teamwork, or integration. With support, the students seemed to be able to distill lessons that they could apply to other teamwork contexts. At the same time, however, this remained a challenge, and the students indicated that their previous educational experiences had shaped their expectations of receiving more outcome-oriented guidance. Figure 5 summarizes the dialectic. \u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eWe conducted action research among a team of master\u0026rsquo;s students to investigate how conceptual knowledge integration occurred and could be supported in their interdisciplinary teamwork. We learned that the students\u0026rsquo; work on our course was often less integrative than it appeared; they reached consensus \u0026lsquo;at surface level\u0026rsquo;. We argue that to avoid false senses of shared understanding and to enable integration \u0026lsquo;beyond the surface\u0026rsquo;, it is essential to engage in \u003cb\u003econceptual disambiguation\u003c/b\u003e. We use the term conceptual disambiguation to refer to the process of making the meaning of concepts explicit and exploring whether the concepts carry identical meanings in different disciplines, and if not, how \u0026ndash;if at all\u0026ndash; different concepts relate to each other, for example by overlapping, complementing, or opposing each other. Subsequently, we found that viewing conceptual knowledge integration through the lens of Baker et al.\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e) conversational learning theory was helpful in identifying and understanding the dynamics that interfere with conceptual disambiguation and integration, and in developing interventions to overcome these barriers.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe observation that exploring, exchanging, and explaining different meanings is important for knowledge integration adds to the existing literature. The integration process as prescribed by Repko \u0026amp; Szostak (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) \u0026ndash; building on the work of Newell (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) \u0026ndash; takes the identification of conflicts as a first step. Newell (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e, pp. 255\u0026ndash;256) pointed out that these conflicts are precisely why integration is needed to create common ground, because in the absence of conflict the common ground would already be established, simply waiting to be discovered. He described the process of creating common ground as \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eoperative decisions [which] regard the extent and nature of the overlap in meaning (think Venn diagrams), and then the development of terminology that brings out the overlap in meaning, while acknowledging the areas of conflict.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (p. 256). This emphasizes the importance of thoroughly apprehending the differences and similarities in meaning between concepts or insights before manipulating terminology.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWith conceptual disambiguation we coined a dedicated concept to emphasize the process of making sense of the extent and nature of the overlap and difference in meaning among concepts. While Newell stressed this as a central process in creating common ground, in theory and practice of interdisciplinarity the focus seems to often be primarily on the second half of his definition: reaching consensus on shared terminologies. Klenk \u0026amp; Meehan (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR30\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e) referred to the focus on decisions and consensus as the \u0026ldquo;integration imperative\u0026rdquo;, when describing how a push for consensus may gloss over differences and silence minority voices in transdisciplinary research. Newell (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR42\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2006\u003c/span\u003e) also recognized this tendency when he wrote: \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003eIntegration [\u0026hellip;]is too often supposed [to consist] of putting together a jigsaw puzzle\u0026rdquo;\u003c/em\u003e (p.255). As we saw in our student team, rushing to make decisions can turn interdisciplinary work into a \u0026lsquo;naming game\u0026rsquo; rather than a \u0026lsquo;framing game\u0026rsquo;. We therefore see our findings as an empirical enrichment and re-emphasis of the importance of disambiguation processes in conceptual integration, and thus argue for granting conceptual disambiguation more attention and legitimacy to be given to conceptual disambiguation in both theory and practice of interdisciplinary integration.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEngaging in conceptual disambiguation means not only identifying conceptual overlaps, but also uncovering areas of conflict or incommensurabilities. Based on her own interdisciplinary research, van der Lecq (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR60\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2011\u003c/span\u003e) complemented Repko \u0026amp; Szostak\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR53\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e) integration techniques that help resolve differences, with an additional strategy that uses difference. She coined this technique \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003edistinguishing\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; and defined it as \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003ebring[ing] out the underlying uncommonality in meaning\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; and discovering \u0026ldquo;\u003cem\u003euncommon ground\u003c/em\u003e\u0026rdquo; (p. 221). She showed that highlighting and substantiating the nature of conceptual differences supports the use of this conceptual distinction to answer her interdisciplinary research question.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eUnderstanding integration as a process of meaning-making that includes non-commonality departs from the etymological meaning of the term integration which centers around unification, wholeness, and integrity. Such an extension of the concept of integration beyond the consensual is also the position taken by Pohl et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR49\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e), who consider consensus as one of several forms of integration and propose several alternatives to consensus. Others, however, argue for revaluing other forms of discipline-crossing (e.g. multidisciplinarity) to receive the same attention and appreciation as interdisciplinarity defined by integration (Mennes, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR41\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Vereijken et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR63\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e), for dissociating interdisciplinarity and integration (Lattuca, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR33\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2001\u003c/span\u003e), or for abandoning the term integration altogether (Holbrook, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR21\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e). This raises fundamental questions about the relationship between integration, coherence, consensus, and interdisciplinarity, which are clearly highly controversial (Madsen, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR38\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e). These questions are beyond the scope of this study, but need to be explored further in order to enable teachers and educational designers to critically reflect on and relate to different views of integration when taking it as a key aim and organizing principle in their interdisciplinary education.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn terms of how conceptual disambiguation and integration can be facilitated, we found conversational learning theory to be a helpful framework. It helped us to recognize, understand, and address dynamics that hindered conceptual disambiguation and integration throughout the project. The context in which we conducted this study \u0026ndash; following just one student team \u0026ndash; was of course limited. Understanding how the principles we have described apply beyond our specific context and contexts directly similar to ours, both within and beyond higher education, requires further research. This includes other interdisciplinary educational contexts, but also other epistemically diverse contexts where integration challenges have been reported such as transdisciplinary research teams and cross-sector teams(Hoffmann et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR19\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2017\u003c/span\u003e; Karrasch et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR26\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Ludwig \u0026amp; El-Hani, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR37\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Yeo, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR65\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e). Of particular interest could be how additional power imbalances (Fritz \u0026amp; Binder, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR15\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e; Koskinen \u0026amp; M\u0026auml;ki, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR32\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e) and conflicts of interests and values (Siebenh\u0026uuml;ner, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR56\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e) affect the knowledge integration processes when additional diversity on other socio-psychological dimensions is introduced, such as career phase, different types of actors, and cultural and national differences. We expect that power imbalances are likely to primarily affect the status-solidarity dialectic, while conflicts and interests affect the individuality-relationality dialectic. However, this and the consequent implications for knowledge integration, remain to be explored.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe dynamics of how the joint and individual projects were shaped in parallel and in interaction in our course was specific to our context in which the student team was formed with the individual projects being (partially) defined before the joint project was. We expect that this particularly affected the individuality-relationality dialectic. It remains to be investigated how this dialectic manifests and shapes integration and collaboration in collaborative designs that are more question- or issue-driven (Horn, Scheffelaar, et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR22\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Robinson, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR54\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2008\u003c/span\u003e). However, we also expect the individuality-relationality dialectic to be at play when projects start out from a joint goal and vision. In addition to their overall goals, collaborative research projects must also fit the goals, agendas, research lines, interests, and preferences of the individuals involved. For example, in interdisciplinary research projects, project design and consortium composition may be driven by overarching issues and visions to which individual researchers subscribe to, but at the same time they usually have to deliver (predominantly) disciplinary PhD theses and publications (van Rijnsoever \u0026amp; Hessels, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR62\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2021\u003c/span\u003e). We therefore argue that the negotiation of work packages in large cross-disciplinary projects may exhibit similar dynamics in the individuality-relationality dialectic to what we observed in the negotiation of the individual and joint (sub-)projects in the context of our course. Whether and how this plays out in the context of such inter- and transdisciplinary research projects requires further research.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOur findings have practical implications for interdisciplinary education practice. First, we see the importance of including the legitimacy of uncommonality and importance of disambiguation in the instruction about interdisciplinarity in order to convey a nuanced and complex understanding of interdisciplinarity and prevent instrumentality. In our study, we found that students were often focused primarily on discovering similarities or overlaps between their projects. This is consistent with previous reports that some students hold \u0026ldquo;jigsaw puzzle\u0026rdquo; like assumptions and expectations about what interdisciplinarity entails (Horn, Urias, et al., 2022). Emphasizing the importance of disambiguation processes and supporting students in engaging in disambiguation processes may support knowledge integration and prevent interdisciplinary processes from becoming \u0026lsquo;undisciplinary\u0026rsquo; (Boix Mansilla, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR6\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e; Haider et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR17\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2018\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSecond, our findings highlight the importance of explicitly supporting disambiguation and integration processes, which requires targeted activities and facilitation strategies that can be grounded in conversational learning theory. Integration is highly challenging, and thefore cannot be assumed to occur automatically (Brown et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR9\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2015\u003c/span\u003e; Hoffmann, Deutsch, et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR18\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2022\u003c/span\u003e; Horn, Urias, et al., 2022). Given the dialogical nature of the conversational learning dimensions (Baker et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e), it should not be surprising that uniting seemingly contradicting behaviours proves challenging and that students therefore need support and training in doing so. We argue that supporting conceptual integration processes in interdisciplinary education requires a combination designing learning activities that target conversation learning a priori, and recognizing and adapting to team dynamics as collaboration unfolds. This requires an interactive teaching approach in which the teacher takes on the role of \u0026lsquo;guide by the side\u0026rsquo; or even \u0026lsquo;meddler in the middle\u0026rsquo; (McWilliam, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR40\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2009\u003c/span\u003e) rather than the more traditional \u0026lsquo;sage on the stage\u0026rsquo; (King, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1993\u003c/span\u003e). In addition, it requires a reactive approach from teachers and therefore their adaptability, flexibility and creativity to adapt didactic and pedagogical approaches to classroom dynamics. We, therefore, argue for the further professionalization of interdisciplinary teaching, including the explicit rethinking of teachers\u0026rsquo; roles, responsibilities and competencies, and the adaptation of support and training accordingly.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, we argue that viewing integration as a process of meaning-making, rather than as the pursuit of a maximally coherent end result, has implications for assessment. The observation that outputs may appear more integrated than they are, calls for the development of assessment tools that help distinguish between different levels of disambiguation and integration of end products. Perhaps a structured and large scale analysis of interdisciplinary student products could serve to build onto Mansilla\u0026rsquo;s (2009) work in which she developed rubrics to assess interdisciplinary integration by adding quality indicators for conceptual disambiguation. But if we argue that integration is a \u003cem\u003eprocess\u003c/em\u003e in which we aim to train students, we might even ask ourselves whether education in which we (exclusively) assess products is constructively aligned (Biggs, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR5\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e1996\u003c/span\u003e). This in turn raises the question of how assessment might be designed to assess the quality of the process. And even more radically, given our findings that extrinsic pressures can disrupt integration processes, it might raise the question of whether grading this process is desirable at all. However, taking such an \u0026lsquo;ungrading\u0026rsquo; (Gorichanaz, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR16\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; Rapchak et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR50\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e) stance may be challenging geven the prominence of extrinsic motivators such as deadlines, grades, and credits in our educational context (Baines et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2025\u003c/span\u003e; Chamberlin et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR10\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2023\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Conclusions","content":"\u003cp\u003eIn this study, we aimed to gain further understanding of conceptual knowledge integration in interdisciplinary teamwork. We made two main contributions. First, we highlighted the importance of conceptual disambiguation as a key process in conceptual integration. This call for conceptual disambiguation was in response to the observation that, in its absence, collaboration can lead to un(der)informed decisions that are coherent but not shared; to integration at \u0026lsquo;surface level\u0026rsquo;. Second, we demonstrated the use of conversational learning theory to understand team dynamics in conceptual knowledge integration processes, identify bottlenecks, and develop targeted interventions to support integration \u0026lsquo;beyond the surface\u0026rsquo;. We argue that the dialectics described by Baker et al. (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR2\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2005\u003c/span\u003e) and translated to the context of conceptual knowledge integration in this study, can support others when engaging in, supervising, facilitating, and training conceptual integration in interdisciplinary, and other epistemically diverse, teamwork. Our findings do not provide one concrete intervention, but rather guidelines for (1) identifying dynamics that may hinder conceptual integration; (2) understanding why dynamics may cause it to stall; and (3) providing a starting point for intervening in conceptual integration processes, with room for adaptation to different contexts.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003cp\u003eBaines, S., Chauhan, S., \u0026amp; Otermans, P. C. J. (2025). Students\u0026rsquo; perception of authentic assessment in higher education: Exploring the relationship between assessment preference and motivation in higher education.\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003eCogent Education\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e12\u003c/em\u003e(1), 2441067. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2024.2441067\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBaker, A. C., Jensen, P. J., \u0026amp; Kolb, D. A. (2005). Conversation as Experiential Learning. \u003cem\u003eManagement Learning\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e36\u003c/em\u003e(4), 411\u0026ndash;427. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507605058130\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBammer, G., O\u0026rsquo;Rourke, M., O\u0026rsquo;Connell, D., Neuhauser, L., Midgley, G., Klein, J. T., Grigg, N. J., Gadlin, H., Elsum, I. R., Bursztyn, M., Fulton, E. A., Pohl, C., Smithson, M., Vilsmaier, U., Bergmann, M., Jaeger, J., Merkx, F., Vienni Baptista, B., Burgman, M. A., \u0026hellip; Richardson, G. P. (2020). Expertise in research integration and implementation for tackling complex problems: When is it needed, where can it be found and how can it be strengthened? \u003cem\u003ePalgrave Communications\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e6\u003c/em\u003e(5), 1\u0026ndash;16. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0380-0\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBergmann, M. (2012). \u003cem\u003eMethods for Transdisciplinary Research: A Primer for Practice\u003c/em\u003e. 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Agentic Denial: How Athletic Teams Sustain Divergent Structures During Concussion Events.\u0026nbsp;\u003cem\u003eSmall Group Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e51\u003c/em\u003e(3), 342\u0026ndash;374. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496419883948\u003c/p\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":false,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":true,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false},"keywords":"interdisciplinarity, teamwork, knowledge integration, conversational learning, conceptual disambiguation, higher education","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eIntegrating knowledge from different disciplines is considered key to realizing the potential of interdisciplinary collaboration and is central to many interdisciplinary research and education initiatives. However, how to stimulate knowledge integration remains elusive. As a middle ground between metatheories that provide all-encompassing conceptualizations of integration and accounts of specific interventions and methodologies to support integration, we set out to identify principles that govern a specific form of knowledge integration: conceptual integration. Using an action research approach, we studied conceptual integration processes in a team of eight students enrolled in diverse Master\u0026rsquo;s programs. We found that they often made quick decisions about concepts, definitions, and relationships between concepts. However, there were several instances where such decisions were later turned out to be false senses of shared understanding. We considered these instances to be indicative of a lack of \u0026lsquo;conceptual disambiguation\u0026rsquo;. Instead of first thoroughly making sense of the overlap and non-overlap between their conceptual understandings, they immediately jumped to agreeing on the terminology they used. At surface level, their work appeared to be integrated. We continued to explore how we could stimulate conceptual disambiguation and integration. We used Conversational Learning Theory and found that its five dialectics proved helpful in identifying, understanding and addressing the dynamics that hindered conceptual integration. Based on these findings, we argue that conceptual disambiguation should be granted greater attention in facilitating and training conceptual integration, and that conversational learning theory can be adopted as a guiding principle to recognize and address bottlenecks in conceptual integration.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Integrating beyond the Surface: Conceptual Disambiguation and Conversational Learning for Shared Meaning-Making in Interdisciplinary Teamwork","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-07-18 20:51:46","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-5931528/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0},{"type":"decision","content":"Revision requested","date":"2025-09-02T15:15:10+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2025-07-09T15:52:46+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2025-07-02T11:24:37+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"14715546334591580348383361947172021287","date":"2025-06-30T17:32:04+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"309434005183218699515395399671788611838","date":"2025-06-27T12:23:07+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"336481655539632431974669706872598962511","date":"2025-06-16T19:29:58+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvitedReview","content":"","date":"2025-03-09T13:13:24+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"68628049197129002661016328733275336852","date":"2025-02-18T20:09:26+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewerAgreed","content":"122458490088492963640750529507658643096","date":"2025-02-17T11:04:42+00:00","index":"hide","fulltext":""},{"type":"reviewersInvited","content":"","date":"2025-02-14T10:39:14+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorInvited","content":"","date":"2025-02-14T09:07:31+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"editorAssigned","content":"","date":"2025-02-14T09:03:39+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"checksComplete","content":"","date":"2025-02-14T09:02:42+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""},{"type":"submitted","content":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","date":"2025-01-30T16:02:36+00:00","index":"","fulltext":""}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"humanities-and-social-sciences-communications","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":false,"externalIdentity":"palcomms","sideBox":"Learn more about [Humanities \u0026 Social Sciences Communications](http://www.nature.com/palcomms/)","snPcode":"41599","submissionUrl":"https://submission.springernature.com/new-submission/41599/3","title":"Humanities and Social Sciences Communications","twitterHandle":"","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":true,"editorialSystem":"stoa","reportingPortfolio":"Nature AJ","inReviewEnabled":true,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":false}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"d7885422-4a22-4c05-bb8f-d9e4436454d5","owner":[],"postedDate":"July 18th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"under-review","subjectAreas":[{"id":51293800,"name":"Social science/Education"},{"id":51293801,"name":"Social science/Science technology and society"},{"id":51293802,"name":"Social science/Sociology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-05-08T09:56:48+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-07-18 20:51:46","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-5931528","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-5931528","identity":"rs-5931528","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}