In this section, we present the results of our study. We start by describing four typical and within-student consistent patterns of behaviour that we observed among students in our course: naïve, assertive, accommodating, and integrative behaviours. We describe how these typical behaviours manifest and how they affect team processes and knowledge integration. We illustrate these behavioural patterns through the use of examples from individual students in particular interaction, which are representative of the consistent patterns that we observed. As competencies are defined by the ability to successfully demonstrate behaviour (Heinsman et al. 2007), we inferred which competencies these behaviours indicate. Then, we present a novel conceptualization of the competencies necessary for interdisciplinary knowledge integration. In our framework, we distinguish between two sets of competencies: Epistemic Stability (ES) and Epistemic Adaptability (EA). ES competencies allow collaborators to contribute their own unique knowledge to a collaboration. EA competencies, on the other hand, allow collaborators to engage with the knowledge contributed by others. Assertive behaviour is the result of high ES and low EA competency, whereas accommodating behaviour is the result of low ES and high EA. We show that interdisciplinary collaboration requires ES and EA competencies. We conclude the results section with more detailed definitions of these competency sets, including an overview of the competencies within each category.
Naïve
First of all, we observed behaviour that we call ‘naïve’. When we started our research to understand competencies for interdisciplinary knowledge integration, the observation of this behaviour among our students surprised us. A wealth of literature stresses how challenging interdisciplinary work is and how it potentially results in tensions and conflicts (e.g., Brown et al. 2015; Crowley and O’Rourke 2020; Morse et al. 2007; Richter and Paretti 2009; Strober 2006). But on many occasions, our students were actually very optimistic about interdisciplinary collaboration and reported that they did not foresee or encounter many challenges. For instance, they did not get into conflict and did not experience difficulties in dealing with disciplinary divides. When we set out to understand this behaviour, we observed that naïve behaviour was characterized by only contributing to the joint work through common knowledge, which prevented conflict, but also caused the discussions and products to remain superficial. Moreover, their (overly) optimistic take on interdisciplinarity seemed to be rooted in the fact that they made sense of disciplines as focusing on different topics, rather than acknowledging that underlying values and assumptions vary wildly across disciplines. As such, they saw the advantages of interdisciplinary work—more diverse knowledge about the topic at hand—without being aware of its challenges—deeply rooted, persistent and fundamental differences of epistemological and ontological beliefs.
An example of a student in whom we observed naïve behaviour is S4, who has a humanities background. During in-class conversations, she contributed little of her own academic knowledge and asked few content-related questions of fellow students or teaching staff. She either remained quiet or contributed to the team discussions in a more process-oriented way, by taking notes, relaying knowledge or taking on organizational tasks such as planning or dividing tasks. In the following quote one of her fellow students (S19) shares an experience with S4 during the journal club exercise:
“Yeah, I think, I first offered my opinion of what I thought the paper was about and how it applied and [S4] kind of agreed and then we ended up writing our key points on the sticky notes, based on what I said. But I didn't really hear if [she] had any other distinct opinions on it. [She] just kind of agreed and said: ‘Yeah that's pretty much the main point and that's what I get from it’”—Student 19 (interdisciplinary programme) about Student 4 (humanities)
This description shows that S4 and S19 did not engage in interdisciplinary knowledge integration, as they settled for the explanation that S19 gave about the paper and S4’s view was not represented in their conversation. Consequently, the conversation remained superficial and does not generate new insights.
We observed a similar pattern during an exercise in which the students created a causal tree of the topic they were working on. A group of students discussed whether a certain concept is a cause or a consequence of plastics pollution. When they did not immediately agree with each other, they decided to place the concept in two different locations (both as cause and consequence) of the causal tree, rather than engaging in an in-depth discussion of what the concept means and why different people hold different opinions. As they avoided addressing this difference of opinion, they failed to realize the potential to learn about each other’s perspectives and to enrich their understanding of the topic. We saw that the students who exhibited naïve behaviour tended to avoid conflict rather than engage in constructive disagreement about differences of opinion that could result in learning about different perspectives and enriching understanding.
Two additional characteristics that we observed to be typical of naïve behaviour are low awareness of and attention to disciplinary differences, and limited insight into the values and assumptions behind their own academic knowledge. These combine to yield low interdisciplinary consciousness (Kjellberg et al. 2018), which is illustrated by the following example of S11. She described that it is important for her that her research focuses on concrete solutions and has practical implications. She mentioned that some of the students in her group seemed to focus more on describing phenomena or problems rather than working towards practical solutions. When asked about what could be the rationale for her fellow students’ view, she said the following:
“See, maybe they just want to deliver a good report for the course, just describing the problem. Maybe they don’t necessarily feel like they have to deliver something that others can continue with. They just describe the whole problem, and that’s it. In the course we also don’t have to write something that has practical relevance.”—Student 11 (exact sciences)
This quote demonstrates that S11 observed a difference between her and her fellow students in how they view the role of their research. Although teaching staff and other students identified this as a difference rooted in different disciplinary backgrounds, S11 seemed unaware of this. Even when asked about it repeatedly and explicitly, she kept making sense of the differences in terms of practical and social drivers, without connecting it to the values and assumptions related to their respective (disciplinary) backgrounds.
Taken together, collaboration that is characterized by naïve behaviour is seemingly smooth, because conflict is rare, collaborators are optimistic about interdisciplinarity and are consequently motivated to do interdisciplinary work. This motivation and optimism seem to be rooted in an incomplete understanding of what interdisciplinary collaboration entails which underestimates its challenges. As such, naïve collaborators are committed to delivering a product together and see value in cross-disciplinary collaboration (as they see it), but do not truly engage in the process of interdisciplinary collaboration to challenge their own and others’ perceptions and ideas. This behaviour is in accordance with the type of interdisciplinarity that Mansilla (2005) described and coined “naïve interdisciplinarity” which is characterized by the lack of integration of disciplinary perspectives and the lack of their representation in interdisciplinary work. Therefore, this seemingly smooth collaboration impedes knowledge integration, because the diversity of knowledge in the cross-disciplinary team is smoothed over rather than wielded to realize the potential of interdisciplinary teamwork to gain a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of the topic (DeWulf et al. 2004). The absence of conflict we observed hampers knowledge integration, as conflicting views are considered to be the starting point for building common ground and subsequently constructing a more comprehensive understanding (Repko and Szostak 2020).
Assertive
Another typical pattern of behaviour that we observed in interactions among students, was assertive behaviour. This was the type of behaviour that we anticipated encountering in an interdisciplinary course. Assertive behaviour is characterised by strong disciplinary perspectives, rigidity of opinions and views, overrepresentation in interactions, and a superior attitude towards other disciplines.
An example of assertive behaviour became clear with S1 (health & life sciences) throughout the course. She had a very strong quantitative grounding, and she often brought up her wish to include quantitative measures during the course. Her contributions were perceived as enriching the teamwork by her fellow students. S15 put it as follows: “[S1] has a very clear direction in mind and [she] makes sure that that is where she is heading for, and that is interesting.” Yet, S1 also demonstrated behaviour that prevented knowledge integration. For instance, she was experienced as being judgmental about the contributions from other fields, and did not seem to truly value research from other fields as highly as from her own field. For instance, in the context of the journal club, S22 observed a heated discussion between S1 (health & life sciences) and S15 (social sciences) about their respective papers. In one of her written reflections, S22 wrote the following about this interaction:
“[S1] and [S15] didn’t agree with the methods used in each other’s paper, they didn’t think each other’s papers were good papers. I found that really interesting to see. I think that after the discussion they may have changed their views a little, but I don’t think that [S1] has really accepted that [S15]’s way is also a good way of conducting research”—Student 22
This quote illustrates that S1 was perceived as not open to S15’s view. The fact that she did not seem to accept S15’s approach as valid indicates that she did not value S15’s view and was unwilling or unable to critically reflect on (the limitations of) her own view. This prevented them from reaching shared understanding. We observed that as a consequence of their assertiveness and tendency to push their own rather than accept others’ knowledge contributions, assertive behaviour often resulted in overrepresentation in the process and consequently also in the product. This hampers integration of different knowledge bases. Because of their strong stance and resistance to changing their minds, students who show assertive behaviour may get into conflict, especially with others who behave similarly.
Moreover, acting assertively may—consciously or unconsciously—result in taking a superior stance towards team members from other fields. The following quote gives an example of a student who expressed a sense of greater importance and value of her own knowledge from her own field (exact sciences) compared to those of others (social sciences), indicating superiority:
“Yes, we can learn from each other, when we see the different disciplines and the value of the different disciplines. But for them that means that they see something that they don’t understand, so they’ll attach more value to it. They will maybe realize that if these technical aspects are something that they should take along, they will then depend on others who do possess this knowledge. While for me, it’s an insight that their disciplines can be supportive, but I can’t immediately think of anything that they contribute that I would never be able to come up with myself.”—Student 21 (exact sciences)
In this quote, S21 described that she perceived an asymmetrical interdependence between social and exact sciences, by which she implied superiority of her own field (exact sciences) over other fields (social sciences). She seemed to be at least partly unaware of her superior stance, as there is a discrepancy between what she said at first (“we can learn from each other”) and what she showed immediately after (“I can’t immediately think of anything that they contribute that I would never be able to come up with myself”). In line with the general (perceived) hierarchy of knowledge and disciplines and the literature (Harris et al. 2009), we observed superior and assertive behaviours most commonly among students with backgrounds in the exact and life sciences, and less commonly in students trained in social sciences and humanities.
Taken together, collaborators who demonstrate assertive behaviour are of value to a cross-disciplinary team as they bring unique knowledge and perspectives to the collaboration. As such, their contributions enrich teamwork. This was expressed by students and is also echoed in literature as it has been reported that the contribution of more unique knowledge leads to better and more comprehensive results (Godemann 2008). However, assertive behaviour hampers knowledge integration through the tendency of people who exhibit it to inflexibly hold on to their own views and through overrepresentation of assertive voices that leave little room for the representation of others’ views.
Accommodating
We observed interactions in which students demonstrated accommodating behaviour. Accommodating behaviour was characterized by listening and asking questions, relying mostly on others’ knowledge and ideas, underrepresentation of accommodating voices in the process and underrepresentation of their knowledge in products, and possible feelings of inferiority. For example, we observed typical accommodating behaviour in S22 (interdisciplinary program) throughout the course. In class, she often asked questions and tended to listen well. Moreover, she expressed that she did not hold a strong disciplinary identity, because she was trained broadly. In the following quote she describes her role in a discussion with classmates:
“Then we formed a problem map. I took an active role in this discussion. I tried to ask people what they thought, and why. If something was not clear or could be interpreted ambiguously, I asked them to explain further. I tried to not impose my opinion in the discussion, even though I was the one holding the chalk and writing most things on the board. I tried to give everyone a voice in the discussion.”—Student 22 (interdisciplinary program)
This example shows that S22 took on a neutral role in the process, asking questions and observing, rather than mingling in on the content of the discussion. She explained in a reflection interview that this behaviour comes naturally to her: she is interested and enjoys learning about others’ views: “I just like asking why, why, why, why”.
Several students who displayed accommodating behaviour expressed that they experienced a feeling of disciplinary inferiority, as they assumed or feared that their classmates did not value their fields’ knowledge. In the following quote, S5 (humanities) provides insight into her feeling of disciplinary inferiority:
“I found it very interesting to collaborate with a math student. But the other way around I’m not always sure if people also see it that way… That’s why I found it quite hard to bring [the contribution from my field] that first time. […] I feel like it’s looked down upon. Probably that is not even the case. But that feeling is fueled by the fact that from an early age onwards you’re told that hard science is the real science, and [my field] is more like, feminine, the feminine humanities versus the hard sciences”—Student 5 (humanities)
In line with the general (perceived) hierarchy of knowledge and disciplines as also reported by Harris et al. (2009), we observed these feelings, expressions, and behaviours of inferiority more commonly among students trained in social sciences and humanities, and less among science students. Moreover, accommodating behaviour was more common among students trained in broad, interdisciplinary programmes compared to students trained in more specialized fields, in line with literature that reports interdisciplinarily trained people may feel like they lack expertise in any particular field (Darbellay 2015).
Overall, accommodating behaviour contributes to interdisciplinary integration by facilitating the process of knowledge exchange by listening well and asking questions. As such, collaborators who behave accommodatingly hold the potential to play an important role in bridging disciplinary divides within cross-disciplinary teams, as is also described by Maglaughlin and Sonnewald (2005) and echoed in the view that interdisciplinary teamwork can benefit from one or more team members who function as ‘connectors’ who are specialized in integration and implementation to harness the knowledge contributions of other (disciplinary) team members (Bammer et al. 2020; Pennington et al. 2020). However, they often do not contribute much of their own knowledge to the content of the project, and instead take the role of process facilitator. Taking a predominantly procedural role prevents collaborators who exhibit accommodating behaviour from contributing the knowledge that they hold and thus limits the diversity of knowledge available to the interdisciplinary effort. Consequently, when collaborators exhibit accommodating behaviour, they depend on teammates who contribute their own knowledge to make their contribution to interdisciplinary knowledge integration. Moreover, when not contributing their knowledge and perspectives, they deprive the team of yet another take on the topic that could potentially enrich their joint understanding.
Integrative
The fourth, and last, pattern of behaviour that we observed in our course is what we call integrative behaviour. Integrative behaviour was characterized by actively connecting one’s own and others’ knowledge. Students who demonstrated integrative behaviour were relatively uncommon.
In the following quote, S7 (interdisciplinary programme) described an interaction between herself and S17 (management studies), in which she connected terminology that S17 used to key concepts in her own field to create shared understanding:
“So I try to translate what [S17] says into my ‘language’ [...] For instance, [she] started talking about improving life. Then I recognized that that also holds a connection to value, at least what I mean when I use the concept value. Then I explained that to [her], and also explained about ‘the bottom of the pyramid’, that there are a lot of people in the bottom classes and that that is also exactly where that value proposition lies.”
When further probed about how this translation came about, she explained the following:
“By giving a definition of a word and asking what they mean with a word. I think I literally asked her: ‘can you define what you mean by the meaning of life?’. Then I check with myself whether I understand […] and if I don’t understand, then I ask again. Or I say that I don’t understand, and ask whether she can explain it again in other words. So, there is a kind of checking loop: do I understand? No, then ask follow-up questions. And as soon as we reach an explanation that I do understand, I confirm. Then we agree on a definition that we both understand and can work with. That’s then that definition of that word, you have kind of a convention. […] This doesn’t have to be entirely new, but it does consist of both worlds, both people. Both parties contribute something. Together you build your own language that we use in that discussion. [...] So, by listening and truly trying to understand what they mean to say. And then try to relate to it, and also realize they are coming from another academic environment than your own.”—Student 7 (interdisciplinary programme)
This quote is an illustration of S7’s ability to create a shared understanding that combines her own and S17’s knowledge bases. Rather than steering away from things that she did not understand, S7 takes a moment of unclarity as the starting point for further exploration to expand their shared understanding. She brought her own knowledge to the interaction, by sharing key concepts (value, value proposition, ‘bottom of the pyramid’) from her field and explaining those to S17. And she engaged with the knowledge that S17 brought to the conversation (e.g., ‘meaning of life’) by trying to understand, summarizing in her own words, checking whether she understood correctly, and asking questions. This was a process of multiple rounds of recursion resulting in a conversation of a dialogical nature (Tsoukas 2009). This interactive process of contributing her own knowledge and engaging with S17’s knowledge allowed her to actively seek connections and together with S17 create shared understanding that integrated knowledge from both of them, applied to the context of the project, and represented ideas that are new (to them). In doing so, she aimed for what she referred to as a ‘convention’, i.e., an agreement in the context of the joint project that does not necessarily represent the viewpoint of either of them outside the context of the joint project. Therefore, this is as Defila and Di Giulio (2017) describe a consensus, not in an ‘agreement in an everyday sense’, but rather an agreed upon description that makes sense for the context of the joint work that aligns with the views, beliefs, assumptions of the collaborators’ backgrounds. The joint ‘language’ that S7 describes is similar to what Galison (1997) calls pidgin or creole, a language that neither of the collaborators is native in, but that they both understand for the purpose of their interaction. Striving for this consensus, S7 does not attempt to convince S17, but rather embraces the possibility of each holding their own views while collaborating on the basis of an agreed upon consensus. As such, she exhibits a plural understanding in which multiple ways of understanding the topic of understanding can exist alongside each other, rather than one of them having to be right, leaving the other to be wrong.
Epistemic competencies for interdisciplinary knowledge integration
The findings presented so far imply that interdisciplinary knowledge integration requires contributing one’s own knowledge and engaging with each other’s knowledge, because we saw that the absence of either or both of these behaviours—in naïve, assertive, and accommodating behaviour—hampered knowledge integration in teams. To make this point explicit, consider teams of collaborators who all exhibit the same type of behaviour. With only naïve behaviour, differences are glossed rather than harnessed to avoid conflict. With only assertive behaviour, knowledge integration will be hampered because collaborators will hold on to their own views and not manage to make links and arrive at an integrated, more comprehensive understanding. And teams of only accommodating behaviour will lack content and disciplinary perspectives that can be integrated, because accommodating behaviour relies on others to contribute knowledge in the absence of which there is no knowledge for the accommodating team to engage with. When collaborators contribute their own knowledge and engage with each other’s knowledge—as is the case in integrative behaviour and in interactions between assertive and accommodating collaborators—we saw team interactions that aided knowledge integration, such as repeated questioning to create understanding and linking of concepts from the knowledge bases of different collaborators.
As interdisciplinary knowledge integration requires these two sets of behaviours—contributing one’s own knowledge and engaging with others’ knowledge—and competencies are defined as the ability to demonstrate certain behaviour (Heinsman et al. 2007), it follows that interdisciplinary knowledge integration also requires two corresponding sets of competencies: Epistemic Stability (ES) competencies, and Epistemic Adaptability (EA) competencies. ES comprises competencies that allow a collaborator to contribute their own knowledge to the interaction, whereas EA includes competencies that enable engaging with others’ knowledge. We call these epistemic competencies, because they describe how students deal with knowledge—both their own and the knowledge of others—to achieve interdisciplinary knowledge integration. When individuals exhibit behaviour that is indicative of both ES and EA, we consider this a demonstration of Integrative Competence. Figure 1 provides an overview of the behavioural patterns that we observed, and their relationship to the two sets of epistemic competencies (ES on the y-axis and EA on the x-axis).
We continue this section by describing the competencies that fall within these two sets, based on insights from empirical research and a review of the literature. A third set of competencies only arise through the presence of ES and EA competencies, we call these integrative competencies.
Epistemic Stability—In the examples of assertive and integrative behaviour, we saw that students contributed their knowledge by sharing concepts, theories or methods. As such, they demonstrate that they have sufficient understanding of concepts in their fields (Nash et al. 2003; Mansilla et al. 2005; Haider et al. 2018; Nurius and Kemp 2019) to apply this knowledge to diverse contexts and explain it to others unfamiliar with their field; this indicates performance-based understanding (Mansilla 2005). Their behaviour is also indicative of communicative skill to explain knowledge from their field (Nurius and Kemp 2019). Moreover, they show that they have confidence (Nash et al. 2003; Nurius and Kemp 2019) about their understanding of their own field and their field’s relevance to the project. This allows them to bring their knowledge to the interaction and stand by it, even if others do not (immediately) understand it or do not agree with it. In addition, the examples also show their drive to contribute knowledge from her field (Falcone et al. 2019), as they opt to bring unique knowledge to the interaction, whereas sticking to common knowledge would have been considerably easier and quicker. This is closely related to their academic identities (Di Giulio and Defila 2017) and motivation to act as a representative of their field in the cross-disciplinary team. In contrast, in accommodating and naive behaviour at least some of these competencies are absent. The fact that those students recurrently refrain from contributing their knowledge to the teamwork throughout the course may be due to limited knowledge in their own field, insecurity about their proficiency in their field or its relevance to the joint effort, a weak identity or drive to represent their field, or a lack of awareness about disciplinary differences and one’s own unique knowledge. For instance, we saw that S22 explicitly expressed that she did not hold a strong disciplinary identity, and that S5 expressed an insecurity to contribute insights from her field because she feared the perceived inferiority of her field.
Epistemic Adaptability—Basic understanding of others’ fields helped collaborators understand each other’s contributions and improved their ability to engage with those contributions. For instance, S22 was trained broadly, and that helped her understand and relate to the views of different students and take on a bridging role in their conversation. Moreover, in the examples of accommodating and integrative behaviour, we saw that students engaged with the knowledge of others by trying to understand, asking questions, and accepting and reproducing the other’s views and knowledge for the joint project. By trying to understand, engaging in deep listening and asking questions, these students demonstrated intellectual curiosity (Nash et al. 2003; Strober 2006; Nurius and Kemp 2019). For instance, S22 kept asking why and expressed that she was—and generally tends to be—curious to know more and understand better. By taking others’ input seriously and not (directly) disregarding ideas different from their own, these students also demonstrate suspension of judgement that allows them to be open to other ideas and value different perspectives (Nash et al. 2003; Strober 2006; Thompson 2009; Parker 2010; Larson et al. 2011; Nurius and Kemp 2019). Moreover, we observed that these students expressed when they did not understand something, and sometimes changed or expanded their view based on new insights provided by others. This illustrates an attitude of epistemic humility (Nash et al. 2003; Gardiner 2020), acknowledging the limitations of one’s own knowledge. On the contrary, assertive and naive behaviour illustrates the absence of at least some of these competencies. The fact that they do not engage actively with others' knowledge may be caused by a lack of intellectual curiosity to understand the others’ reasoning, strong prejudices and thus not being open to other views, or conviction that one’s own field holds all the answers (i.e., the absence of epistemic humility). We saw, for instance, that S1 had a rigid image of good science as being quantitative and lacked an open attitude to critically question her view. And S21 expressed a seemingly implicit assumption or prejudice of superiority of sciences compared to social sciences, indicating a lack of humility.
Integrative Competencies—In addition to the competencies that relate specifically to the ES or the EA dimensions, we also observed competencies that students only demonstrated possessing if they mastered ES and EA competencies. These integrative competencies are pluralistic understanding and functional disagreement. In the example of S7 and S17 we observed that they reached what S7 calls a “convention”, or as Defila and Di Giulio (2017) call it: consensus. S7’s ability and willingness to agree on such a consensus, is indicative of a pluralistic understanding of the topic at hand, allowing for multiple equally valid interpretations and acceptance of their coexistence (Lélé and Norgaard 2005; Miller et al. 2013). Moreover, we observed in integrative behaviour the willingness to address conflicts or disagreements, rather than ignoring them or smoothing them over. In the example of S7, she actively searched for the points of unclarity or disagreement by repeatedly asking questions, which demonstrates that she saw disagreement and misunderstanding as a learning opportunity rather than an obstacle (Freeth and Canglia 2020; Monteiro and Keating 2009).
Table 1 gives an overview of the ES, EA and integrative competencies building onto the competencies identified in previous studies.
Table 1 Conceptualization of epistemic competencies for interdisciplinarity as Epistemic Stability, Epistemic Adaptability, and Integrative Competencies