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Introduction Health professions education faces transitions from monodisciplinary to integrated education and from soloist teachers to interdisciplinary teacher teams. Interdisciplinary teamwork has been found complex and prone to conflict. Teachers’ perceptions of why some teams work and learn as a real interdisciplinary team and others do not are lacking in this setting. We studied the factors that teachers perceive as enabling and/or inhibiting interdisciplinary team learning. Methods In this exploratory, qualitative study, we conducted 17 semi-structured, vignette-guided interviews with teachers recruited from diverse disciplines in undergraduate health professions programmes at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, through maximum variation sampling. Team learning research informed data collection and template analysis. Results We identified three themes representing the factors that teachers perceived to influence interdisciplinary team learning: ‘alignment/misalignment with the educational philosophy’ (regarding personal attributes, tendencies and motivation), ‘leadership practices’ (encompassing team vision, responsibility and reflection), and ‘involvement in organisational processes’ (covering organisational decision-making, support and learning opportunities). For interdisciplinary team learning in development of integrated education, teachers emphasised their personal ability to move beyond disciplinary boundaries. Shared team leadership enabled the creation of a shared vision, shared responsibility, and team reflection. Lastly, teacher involvement in educational management, peer support and learning was considered important. Discussion To work beyond disciplines in health professions education, teachers should take an interest in integrated education, share responsibility and work in an environment where people continuously learn from others. Organisations can facilitate this by involving teachers in decision-making processes and providing faculty development aimed to foster shared leadership and team reflection.

BackgroundTeachers’ beliefs play an important role in how teachers think about how students learn, and how content should be organized and taught. Integrated STEM is pushing the boundaries of some of the traditional assumptions in education—disciplined-based courses, courses taught independently by teachers, standards and content-driven, and no collaborative planning time for teachers. Six teachers, located in two high schools, participated in a year-long program to develop interdisciplinary collaboration to implement integrated STEM learning in their courses. A qualitative instrumental case study of the two teams of teachers was conducted to gain insights and understandings of the teachers’ beliefs and instructional practices of STEM integration through interdisciplinary approaches in a complex system (i.e., hydroponics).ResultsThemes regarding features, beliefs and practices, and challenges emerged from cross-case analysis of the teachers’ stories, which resulted in two interdisciplinary collaboration models, multi-classroom and extracurricular activity, from each of the teams at each of the two high schools. Multi-classroom and extracurricular activity models had some resemblances, but also had differences. Both cases had the same goals to use real-world problems to help students see STEM connections, learn STEM knowledge and skills, and apply STEM knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems.ConclusionsBased on teachers’ beliefs and their interdisciplinary STEM collaboration practices, three components were identified. Team size, teaching goal, and collaboration structure highly affect a successful interdisciplinary STEM collaboration model in high school settings. The study also contributes to expend the concept of a continuum of STEM approaches to curriculum integration, disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary (Vasquez, Sneider, & Comer, STEM lesson essentials: Integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, 2013), and provides frameworks for structuring a successful interdisciplinary collaboration model in high school settings.

Background In order to best prepare medical students for their increasingly complex future career, interdisciplinary higher education is swiftly gaining popularity. However, the implementation of interdisciplinary learning in medical education is challenging. The present study deepens the understanding of the challenges and opportunities inherent to the implementation of an interdisciplinary course. We elucidated the attitudes and beliefs of students participating in a newly developed interdisciplinary minor, in which students of medicine (MS) and communication and information sciences (CISS) were involved. Methods We conducted four semi-structured focus group interviews, of which two were held before, and two were held after the course. Seven MS and six CISS participated voluntarily. A pre-arranged interview guide was used. The interviews were recorded and afterwards systematically analyzed with the ‘constant comparative analysis’ technique. Results The focus group interviews revealed three differences in epistemics between students in terms of 1) curriculum content, 2) educational formats and 3) student’s competence perceptions. These factors influenced the way students evaluated themselves, each other and the interdisciplinary course. Conclusions We conclude that factors that influence interdisciplinary learning are personal epistemics, individual learning preferences, and the synergy that is achieved throughout interdisciplinary learning. Organizing the dialogue among students of different disciplines could make students aware of inequalities, implicated biases and assigned status of different student groups. These empirical results are crucial to tailor interdisciplinary education to each specific discipline and to take interdisciplinary learning to a higher level of maturity.

Interprofessional team training is needed to improve nurse-physician communication skills that are lacking in clinical practice. Using simulations has proven to be an effective learning approach for team training. Yet, it has logistical constraints that call for the exploration of virtual environments in delivering team training. This study aimed to evaluate a team training program using virtual reality vs conventional live simulations on medical and nursing students' communication skill performances and teamwork attitudes. In June 2018, the authors implemented nurse-physician communication team training using communication tools. A randomized controlled trial study was conducted with 120 undergraduate medical and nursing students who were randomly assigned to undertake team training using virtual reality or live simulations. The participants from both groups were tested on their communication performances through team-based simulation assessments. Their teamwork attitudes were evaluated using interprofessional attitude surveys that were administered before, immediately after, and 2 months after the study interventions. The team-based simulation assessment revealed no significant differences in the communication performance posttest scores (P=.29) between the virtual and simulation groups. Both groups reported significant increases in the interprofessional attitudes posttest scores from the baseline scores, with no significant differences found between the groups over the 3 time points. Our study outcomes did not show an inferiority of team training using virtual reality when compared with live simulations, which supports the potential use of virtual reality to substitute conventional simulations for communication team training. Future studies can leverage the use of artificial intelligence technology in virtual reality to replace costly human-controlled facilitators to achieve better scalability and sustainability of team-based training in interprofessional education. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04330924; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04330924.

A growing body of research suggests that \"high-impact practices\" such as project-based and experiential learning make important contributions to undergraduate student development and outcomes. However, most attempts to evaluate such programs are based on qualitative or self-reported data generated from small samples. This study examines the impact on student development of a large university program that incorporates project-based learning into applied, vertically integrated, interdisciplinary research teams. We deploy a range of evidence, including self-reported assessments with a comparison group, a matched-pairs analysis of educational outcomes, participant surveys, and an alumni survey. By including a counterfactual comparison, our study demonstrates that applied projects can foster intellectual growth and positive academic outcomes among undergraduate students by: (1) contributing to skill development in relation to research, teamwork, and critical thinking; (2) developing closer relationships among students, faculty, and others within the university; (3) increasing the likelihood that a student graduates with distinction; and (4) contributing to career discernment that shapes students' post-graduate trajectories, often predisposing students toward careers in public service. We comment on the most important factors for faculty and universities seeking to replicate this model: an emphasis on team organization and operations; the opportunity for students to develop close relationships aided by layered mentoring; and applied research. We also lay out the case for developing a general structure of evaluation for such programs to facilitate comparisons across educational contexts. (HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Among the many challenges confronting the liberal arts today is a fundamental disconnect between the curricula that many institutions offer and the training that many students need. Discipline-specific models of teaching and learning can underprepare students for the kinds of interdisciplinary collaboration that employers now expect. Although aware of these expectations and the need for change, many small colleges and universities have struggled to translate interdisciplinarity into programs and curricula that better serve today’s students. Written by faculty engaged in the design and delivery of interdisciplinary courses, programs, and experiential learning opportunities in the small college setting,  The Synergistic Classroom  addresses the many ways faculty can leverage their institutions' small size and openness to pedagogical experimentation to overcome the challenges of limited institutional resources and enrollment concerns and better prepare students for life and work in the twenty-first century. Taken together, the contributions in this volume invite reflection on a variety of important issues that attend the work of small college faculty committed to expanding student learning across disciplinary boundaries.

Preparing students to collaborate with AI remains a challenging goal. As AI technologies are new to K-12 schools, there is a lack of studies that inform how to design learning when AI is introduced as a collaborative learning agent to classrooms. The present study, therefore, aimed to explore teachers’ perspectives on what (1) curriculum design, (2) student-AI interaction, and (3) learning environments are required to design student-AI collaboration (SAC) in learning and (4) how SAC would evolve. Through in-depth interviews with 10 Korean leading teachers in AI in Education (AIED), the study found that teachers perceived capacity and subject-matter knowledge building as the optimal learning goals for SAC. SAC can be facilitated through interdisciplinary learning, authentic problem solving, and creative tasks in tandem with process-oriented assessment and collaboration performance assessment. While teachers expressed instruction on AI principles, data literacy, error analysis, AI ethics, and AI experiences in daily life were crucial support, AI needs to offer an instructional scaffolding and possess attributes as a learning mate to enhance student-AI interaction. In addition, teachers highlighted systematic AIED policy, flexible school system, the culture of collaborative learning, and a safe to fail environment are significant. Teachers further anticipated students would develop collaboration with AI through three stages: (1) learn about AI, (2) learn from AI, and (3) learn together. These findings can provide a more holistic understanding of the AIED and implications for the educational policies, educational AI design as well as instructional design that are aimed at enhancing SAC in learning.

School STEM education thrives on the quality of interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches, which inherently require science teachers to engage in productive and collaborative efforts with their colleagues from other disciplines. The sociological forces that shape the performance of teacher interdisciplinary collaborations have been relatively understudied in the existing body of research. Among these factors, power distance value (PDV) stands out as a key determinant of successful teamwork among teachers from diverse backgrounds. This issue takes on heightened importance in high PDV societies, such as China. To address this gap, our study delves deeper into the unexplored dimensionality of PDV, thereby shedding light on how teachers’ PDVs manifest in their collaboration for interdisciplinary STEM (iSTEM) education. The finding derived from our data analysis of 523 Chinese primary and secondary school teachers involved in iSTEM programmes supports a three-dimensional PDV model that comprises decision-making power inequality, asymmetric social distance, and hierarchical cultural value. This contrasts with the common practice of assigning individuals a one-size-fits-all PDV score in literature. Using a novel network model, we further provided a refined understanding of how teachers’ differential PDV orientations could give rise to conflicts that may stymie team efforts at advancing iSTEM initiatives. This enables informed decisions on the formation and management of iSTEM collaboration teams, ultimately supporting the enhancement and sustainability of interdisciplinary teaching practices.

Teams become a key resource for organisations to meet different challenges. Thus a high team performance is essential in work context. The aim of this study was to get a deeper understanding of meaningful team learning and team mental models in educational contexts, by analysing the effect of team learning behaviours (TLBs) on the development of task-related team mental model (Task-TMM) and team performance. A three-wave longitudinal survey was conducted among interdisciplinary vocational teacher teams (N = 66 teams with 276 team members). TLBs and team performance were measured by validated scales. Task-TMM was measured by an open question about the work tasks of the teams to achieve its goals. The answers were evaluated by content analysis and categorised according to their semantic similarity. Path modelling of the data shows that TLBs have a positive effect on developing Task-TMM and on team performance in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and innovativeness. Task-TMM has a positive effect on effectiveness but not on efficiency or innovativeness. The results provide insights into how teachers’ team performance can be fostered, such as by fostering TLBs creating a learning environment where team members depend on each other to accomplish their work tasks. Especially the longitudinal design and the type of analysis of Task-TMM provides new and deep insights into the relationship between TLBs, Task-TMM and team performance. Through the qualitative approach investigating Task-TMM the study also provides insight into the work tasks of teams in detail.

Collaborative professional development among teachers is the endogenous driving force for accelerating the evolution across interdisciplinary fields and for producing high-quality scientific research outcomes. Grounded in fairness heuristic theory, a moderated mediation model was proposed and tested on teachers’ knowledge-sharing willingness, perceptions of organizational justice, research stress, and teamwork behavior in Shandong universities in China. An online survey was conducted using convenience sampling and data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and hierarchical regression analysis with AMOS and Process software. The findings from 648 valid responses indicate that research stress significantly and positively influences teamwork behavior. The knowledge-sharing willingness partially mediates the relationship between research stress and teamwork behavior. Additionally, perceived organizational justice play a moderating role in the relationships between research stress and teamwork behavior, research stress and the knowledge-sharing willingness, and knowledge-sharing willingness and teamwork behavior. By enhancing teachers’ perceptions of organizational justice, universities can effectively mitigate research stress, foster knowledge sharing and teamwork, ultimately leading to improved interdisciplinary research efficiency and innovation capabilities. Plain Language Summary Teachers’ collaborative professional development drives interdisciplinary progress and high-quality research. This study, based on fairness heuristic theory, explored the links between Shandong university teachers’ research stress, teamwork behavior, willingness to share knowledge, and perceived organizational justice. Using online surveys and statistical analyses, 648 valid responses revealed that research stress positively predicted teamwork behavior, with knowledge-sharing willingness partially mediating this relationship. Perceived organizational justice moderated these three key links: research stress and teamwork behavior, research stress and knowledge-sharing willingness, and knowledge-sharing willingness and teamwork behavior. In summary, enhancing teachers’ perceived organizational justice can reduce research stress, promote knowledge sharing and teamwork, thereby improving the efficiency and innovation of interdisciplinary research.