the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 04 Mar 2022
Strengthening interdisciplinary water research – learnings from sports team management
Abstract. Well-functioning teams with clear roles and advanced processes have a high potential to initiate peer learning and thus interdisciplinary collaboration. The need for interdisciplinary excellence is a modern-day phenomenon that characterizes all research, including water research. In this paper, we argue that by focusing on developing team culture and practices, a research group enhances their peer learning and psychological safety within and beyond the group. We approach this issue by summarizing the key findings from a five-year team development project in water research, where the data collection focused on co-creation practices, active reflection, and journey mapping methods. These findings were described through a sports team framework and presented through Tuckman’s team development model to capture the whole life cycle of a team. We present a collection of hands-on team practices that improved team performance and psychological safety by enhancing peer learning and utilizing the diverse competence of individuals. A diverse team with a hybrid hierarchy, transparent communication, and co-designed collaboration practices turned out to be important to strengthen commitment, belongingness, and psychological safety. These were critical especially for doctoral students who were actively supported and encouraged for risk-taking and innovative, interdisciplinary research openings in water research. We conclude that coordinating research group activities that promote collaboration, diversity, and psychological safety can efficiently leverage interdisciplinary academic and educational performance.
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RC1: 'Comment on hess-2022-85', Erik Mostert, 23 Mar 2022
The paper addresses the challenge how to create interdisciplinary research teams that facilitate collaboration and learning. It draws on the literature on sport teams management and discusses the experiences in the Majakka project, a five-year water research project in which peer learning and peer support were central. It is not a novel idea to compare teams outside of sport with sport teams, but if there is a substantial body of literature on sport teams, it is definitely a good idea to take stock of this literature, assess the relevance for interdisciplinary water research, try and apply the insights gained, and discuss the experiences. That being said, there are some major issues with the paper.
First, the paper does not systematically analyse the literature on sport teams. As a reader, I would like to know what type of research has been conducted on sport teams management and what the main conclusions or lessons are. Throughout the paper there are references to this literature, and at several places the authors state that a specific issue is equally relevant for sports and for research, but that is not quite the same thing. Many terms and concepts are used in the paper that are not properly discussed, such as social capital, transactional and transformational leadership and of course interdisciplinary. A term that is used several times later in the paper is “psychological safety”, but there is no discussion of this term and why it is relevant for interdisciplinary water research.
Secondly, the description of the case is rather abstract. For example, the paper mentions that students were encouraged to invite co-authors for their articles, which led to “situations of peer learning in terms of scientific practices, new methods and transferable skills.” (line169-171) A concrete example specifying the practices and methods learnt and the skills gained would be really useful. In addition, more details about the Majakka project would be welcome. What was it about, was it one big project with each PhD student working on one part of it or was it rather a cluster of related projects, and was there only one supervisor for all PhD students? The teams building activities could be described more systematically and clearly too. Moreover, there is talk of the research group, but oftentimes it is not clear whether this refers to the Water and Development Research Group or the larger Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group.
Thirdly, the methodology is not explained well. In section 2.2 there is talk of journey mapping workshops, objective discussions, reflective workshops, co-designing workshop, regular workshops, interviews and surveys, but details are missing. What is the differences between the different types of workshops, were they recorded, transcribed or summarised, how and by whom? Who were interviewed how often and by whom, and what questions were asked or what issues were addressed? And how, and how often, were collaborative activities, group culture and wellbeing assessed in the surveys? Measuring particularly group culture is not a straightforward process and depends on one’s concept of group culture. An further bit of information that is missing is the role of the authors in the Majakka group or the lager WDRG or WAT groups. If they were involved, this is something to reflect upon as it may influence interpretation.
Fourthly, I can imagine there are also differences between sports and research, but these are not discussed. In team sports, teams always win as a team, and if a team members want to show off his prowess at the expense of the team, this is visible for all spectators. In PhD research projects, however, PhD students obtain an individual degree and collaboration takes place behind the scenes – or not. According to the authors, the Majakka project took place in a community that focuses on collective research successes. This not the same everywhere in academia. Discussion of the differences between sports and research and between different research settings could results in a clearer view on the challenges of interdisciplinaritry and the best strategies to promote it.
A smaller but not unimportant issue is that Figure 1 is not clear. It is not clear what the axes represent and why references are given both in the caption and in the figure itself. The descriptions in the figure partly describe Tuckman’s model or further developments of this model, and partly they seem to describe the Majakka case, or at least they are formulated as such (e.g. testing and orientation “were” a crucial stage).
The conclusion of the paper is that “peer learning” would benefit from “mechanisms and practices” that establish, reinforce and enable "formal and informal activities” that “facilitate collaboration, new research openings and strengthen psychological safety among the team.” (lines 414-416). This conclusion lacks specificity and it is not clearly supported by the preceding analysis.
My own conclusion is that the paper needs to be rewritten completely. It is definitely worthwhile to analyse the literature on sport teams management and discuss the experiences with applying the lessons, but the result should be a quite different paper.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2022-85-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
Dear Dr. Mostert,
on behalf of all authors, I sincerely thank you for your careful reading and constructive comments on our manuscript.
Based on your comments we will make major revisions to the manuscript, including:
1. Overall rewriting of the work, including descriptions of the project, used methods, and a more critical assessment of the sports team framework,
2. Reporting the sports literature review and the method description in a more systematic way,
3. Restructuring the Results and Discussion to align Tuckman’s model more strongly.These and other revisions are described in detail in our point-by-point replies to the comments in the supplementary pdf file.
Yours sincerely,
Maija Taka
-
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
-
RC2: 'Comment on hess-2022-85', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Apr 2022
This manuscript uses a framework developed for examining the development of small groups, that has been further developed in the literature to explain the development of sports teams, to explore the development of collaborative PhD research groups. This is an interesting application of an existing framework that offers considerable potential to better understand how, why and when successful collaborative research can be achieved. The data set is centred on case study analysis of an interdisciplinary doctoral education pilot project (the Majakka project) using the sports teams framework, data from “journey mapping” by members of the doctoral project and the wider programme in which it is embedded, as well as interviews and workshops with the participants during the project.
The potential strength of this paper is the unique data set provided by the case study that has considerable value for improving understanding of how small collaborative research groups develop, can be supported, and what they can achieve in terms of interdisciplinary research and education outcomes. However, additional explanations and clarifications, some further data analysis and paper restructuring are needed to maximise the explanative potential of the data and its findings.
Firstly, in the introduction and throughout the paper, all key terms need to be clearly defined and explained: inter and transdisciplinary, collaborative learning, self-directed peer learning, social capital, transformational leadership, culture-building, group storming, active learning goal mapping etc.
Some more robust arguments as to why the sports team framework was chosen would be beneficial i.e. did this come from the authors past experiences? The background to this needs quite some reworking e.g. paragraph 3 of the introduction: “The sports team framework holds high potential for research groups and doctoral education development as well: it can improve and create new processes of peer learning and collaboration, and clarify the need for diversity, support, and shared motivation”. The framework itself cannot improve and create new processes etc. but it can be used to analyse how these emerge. The research questions also require some refinements as in the manuscript in its current form they are not convincingly addressed.
Figure 1 should be introduced and much more fully explained, either in the introduction or in a new section 2, that specifically reviews the literature, develops the framework and places it in its new context of collaborative (and interdisciplinary) research. (Also, the references related to Figure 1 are missing from the reference list).
In the methods section, a more thorough description of the journey mapping workshops (who was there, what did they do, and when) and more specific details of the workshops, interviews and surveys should be provided along with how the data were collected (recorded, notes taken, photo of images and figures created) and managed (transcribed, categorised, sorted etc.).
The results and discussion do not seem particularly well aligned to the Framework that has been proposed in Fig 1. Paragraph 1 seems unnecessary and could be removed.
It would then make most sense, if the sub-headings of each element of the framework were aligned with the key elements of each section.Under 3.1 Forming, the subheadings of i) Boundaries, ii) Dependencies, and iii) Leadership, would be much more logical as these words appear in Tuckmans original description. Some more detailed analysis of research boundaries (how they are set up, what constrains them and how they are defended in an interdisciplinary setting would be extremely interesting). Under Dependencies, you can talk about how roles are allocated and human resources selected to build a “team”. Here I would expect some discussion of how different disciplinary skill sets are brought together. Under Leadership you can bring together all the material scattered throughout the analysis and discussion on leadership, how it was structured and how it worked.
Under 3.2 Storming, the sub-headings of e.g. Conflicts/Polarisation, and Facilitation. Figure 2 needs much more thorough explanation here. What do the colours relate to in Fig. 2a and why do the axes cover scale and qualitative/quantitative? In 2b) what data is this based on? Could you add a quantitative element, i.e. what was the risk that the greatest number of students were concerned about? Why is maternity or paternity leave perceived as a risk? This needs to explained and contextualised (for the Finnish setting).
For 3.3 Norming, sub-headings of Cohesiveness, New standards, and New roles, would shape a very interesting discussion. The term “culture” seems vague and does not fit with the sports management framework. More details on the mechanisms and how they were operationalised to achieve the “Cohesiveness” would be needed. E.g. how was a commitment of 5% of work time for the common good implemented and monitored? How was psychological safety achieved and what is the evidence of this? How was learning across different disciplines achieved? i.e. through joint fieldwork, shared data collection, different analysis approaches of the same data sets etc. What new standards of evaluation have emerged? How have new roles within the research groups evolved or been developed?
Under 3.4 Performing, sub-headings of e.g. Interpersonal structure, Performance, Activity. Under interpersonal structure, you have great material about the interactions between more advanced researchers and early career scientists. More details and explanations of the findings of the interactions between academic and non-academic partners would be very valuable especially in terms of the challenges to collaboration that these may present. Figure 3 needs considerably more explanation. Explain the scales – what exactly is meant by enabling, reinforcing, indivisible, constraining, counteracting, cancelling?
What are the reasons why some students start the process higher on the scale than others? It is interesting that COVID affected students differently and this seems worthy of some discussion and explanation.
Provision of supporting data for any statements made is essential. E.g. page 11, “Journey mapping results highlight how doctoral students enjoyed the most those papers where they were working in an interdisciplinary team”.
“At the beginning of their studies, the position of not being the corresponding author was found to increase their belongingness and psychological safety”.
“Regarding the growth as a researcher, ownership of their work, and an established role in the community, the 3-to-12-month research visits were found valuable.” From where have these findings been obtained and how many students do they relate to (e.g. interview with student No. X in 202X; workshop no X).In section 3.5, some discussion of whether the authors feel a fixed duration project in which all researchers start and finish together would generate a stronger collaboration than on ongoing, rolling project in which research start and finish at different times would be interesting.
Section 3.6 seems unnecessary and could be removed.
Additional comments
In the current form of the manuscript, the interdisciplinary aspects are not prominent. Therefore, consider changing the title, to replace “interdisciplinary” with “collaborative”.
Provide more details of the case study to give context e.g. where did funding come from and was collaborative research a specific objective of the funders, what was the background to the project, did the senior researchers have prior experience of working together etc.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2022-85-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
Dear Anonymous Referee,
on behalf of all authors, I sincerely thank you for your careful reading and constructive comments on our manuscript.
Based on your comments we will make major revisions to the manuscript, including:
1. Overall rewriting of the work, including descriptions of the project, used methods, and a more critical assessment of the sports team framework,
2. Reporting the sports literature review and the method description in a more systematic way,
3. Restructuring the Results and Discussion to align Tuckman’s model more strongly.These and other revisions are described in detail in our point-by-point replies to the comments in the supplementary pdf file.
Yours sincerely,
Maija Taka
-
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on hess-2022-85', Erik Mostert, 23 Mar 2022
The paper addresses the challenge how to create interdisciplinary research teams that facilitate collaboration and learning. It draws on the literature on sport teams management and discusses the experiences in the Majakka project, a five-year water research project in which peer learning and peer support were central. It is not a novel idea to compare teams outside of sport with sport teams, but if there is a substantial body of literature on sport teams, it is definitely a good idea to take stock of this literature, assess the relevance for interdisciplinary water research, try and apply the insights gained, and discuss the experiences. That being said, there are some major issues with the paper.
First, the paper does not systematically analyse the literature on sport teams. As a reader, I would like to know what type of research has been conducted on sport teams management and what the main conclusions or lessons are. Throughout the paper there are references to this literature, and at several places the authors state that a specific issue is equally relevant for sports and for research, but that is not quite the same thing. Many terms and concepts are used in the paper that are not properly discussed, such as social capital, transactional and transformational leadership and of course interdisciplinary. A term that is used several times later in the paper is “psychological safety”, but there is no discussion of this term and why it is relevant for interdisciplinary water research.
Secondly, the description of the case is rather abstract. For example, the paper mentions that students were encouraged to invite co-authors for their articles, which led to “situations of peer learning in terms of scientific practices, new methods and transferable skills.” (line169-171) A concrete example specifying the practices and methods learnt and the skills gained would be really useful. In addition, more details about the Majakka project would be welcome. What was it about, was it one big project with each PhD student working on one part of it or was it rather a cluster of related projects, and was there only one supervisor for all PhD students? The teams building activities could be described more systematically and clearly too. Moreover, there is talk of the research group, but oftentimes it is not clear whether this refers to the Water and Development Research Group or the larger Water and Environmental Engineering Research Group.
Thirdly, the methodology is not explained well. In section 2.2 there is talk of journey mapping workshops, objective discussions, reflective workshops, co-designing workshop, regular workshops, interviews and surveys, but details are missing. What is the differences between the different types of workshops, were they recorded, transcribed or summarised, how and by whom? Who were interviewed how often and by whom, and what questions were asked or what issues were addressed? And how, and how often, were collaborative activities, group culture and wellbeing assessed in the surveys? Measuring particularly group culture is not a straightforward process and depends on one’s concept of group culture. An further bit of information that is missing is the role of the authors in the Majakka group or the lager WDRG or WAT groups. If they were involved, this is something to reflect upon as it may influence interpretation.
Fourthly, I can imagine there are also differences between sports and research, but these are not discussed. In team sports, teams always win as a team, and if a team members want to show off his prowess at the expense of the team, this is visible for all spectators. In PhD research projects, however, PhD students obtain an individual degree and collaboration takes place behind the scenes – or not. According to the authors, the Majakka project took place in a community that focuses on collective research successes. This not the same everywhere in academia. Discussion of the differences between sports and research and between different research settings could results in a clearer view on the challenges of interdisciplinaritry and the best strategies to promote it.
A smaller but not unimportant issue is that Figure 1 is not clear. It is not clear what the axes represent and why references are given both in the caption and in the figure itself. The descriptions in the figure partly describe Tuckman’s model or further developments of this model, and partly they seem to describe the Majakka case, or at least they are formulated as such (e.g. testing and orientation “were” a crucial stage).
The conclusion of the paper is that “peer learning” would benefit from “mechanisms and practices” that establish, reinforce and enable "formal and informal activities” that “facilitate collaboration, new research openings and strengthen psychological safety among the team.” (lines 414-416). This conclusion lacks specificity and it is not clearly supported by the preceding analysis.
My own conclusion is that the paper needs to be rewritten completely. It is definitely worthwhile to analyse the literature on sport teams management and discuss the experiences with applying the lessons, but the result should be a quite different paper.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2022-85-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
Dear Dr. Mostert,
on behalf of all authors, I sincerely thank you for your careful reading and constructive comments on our manuscript.
Based on your comments we will make major revisions to the manuscript, including:
1. Overall rewriting of the work, including descriptions of the project, used methods, and a more critical assessment of the sports team framework,
2. Reporting the sports literature review and the method description in a more systematic way,
3. Restructuring the Results and Discussion to align Tuckman’s model more strongly.These and other revisions are described in detail in our point-by-point replies to the comments in the supplementary pdf file.
Yours sincerely,
Maija Taka
-
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
-
RC2: 'Comment on hess-2022-85', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Apr 2022
This manuscript uses a framework developed for examining the development of small groups, that has been further developed in the literature to explain the development of sports teams, to explore the development of collaborative PhD research groups. This is an interesting application of an existing framework that offers considerable potential to better understand how, why and when successful collaborative research can be achieved. The data set is centred on case study analysis of an interdisciplinary doctoral education pilot project (the Majakka project) using the sports teams framework, data from “journey mapping” by members of the doctoral project and the wider programme in which it is embedded, as well as interviews and workshops with the participants during the project.
The potential strength of this paper is the unique data set provided by the case study that has considerable value for improving understanding of how small collaborative research groups develop, can be supported, and what they can achieve in terms of interdisciplinary research and education outcomes. However, additional explanations and clarifications, some further data analysis and paper restructuring are needed to maximise the explanative potential of the data and its findings.
Firstly, in the introduction and throughout the paper, all key terms need to be clearly defined and explained: inter and transdisciplinary, collaborative learning, self-directed peer learning, social capital, transformational leadership, culture-building, group storming, active learning goal mapping etc.
Some more robust arguments as to why the sports team framework was chosen would be beneficial i.e. did this come from the authors past experiences? The background to this needs quite some reworking e.g. paragraph 3 of the introduction: “The sports team framework holds high potential for research groups and doctoral education development as well: it can improve and create new processes of peer learning and collaboration, and clarify the need for diversity, support, and shared motivation”. The framework itself cannot improve and create new processes etc. but it can be used to analyse how these emerge. The research questions also require some refinements as in the manuscript in its current form they are not convincingly addressed.
Figure 1 should be introduced and much more fully explained, either in the introduction or in a new section 2, that specifically reviews the literature, develops the framework and places it in its new context of collaborative (and interdisciplinary) research. (Also, the references related to Figure 1 are missing from the reference list).
In the methods section, a more thorough description of the journey mapping workshops (who was there, what did they do, and when) and more specific details of the workshops, interviews and surveys should be provided along with how the data were collected (recorded, notes taken, photo of images and figures created) and managed (transcribed, categorised, sorted etc.).
The results and discussion do not seem particularly well aligned to the Framework that has been proposed in Fig 1. Paragraph 1 seems unnecessary and could be removed.
It would then make most sense, if the sub-headings of each element of the framework were aligned with the key elements of each section.Under 3.1 Forming, the subheadings of i) Boundaries, ii) Dependencies, and iii) Leadership, would be much more logical as these words appear in Tuckmans original description. Some more detailed analysis of research boundaries (how they are set up, what constrains them and how they are defended in an interdisciplinary setting would be extremely interesting). Under Dependencies, you can talk about how roles are allocated and human resources selected to build a “team”. Here I would expect some discussion of how different disciplinary skill sets are brought together. Under Leadership you can bring together all the material scattered throughout the analysis and discussion on leadership, how it was structured and how it worked.
Under 3.2 Storming, the sub-headings of e.g. Conflicts/Polarisation, and Facilitation. Figure 2 needs much more thorough explanation here. What do the colours relate to in Fig. 2a and why do the axes cover scale and qualitative/quantitative? In 2b) what data is this based on? Could you add a quantitative element, i.e. what was the risk that the greatest number of students were concerned about? Why is maternity or paternity leave perceived as a risk? This needs to explained and contextualised (for the Finnish setting).
For 3.3 Norming, sub-headings of Cohesiveness, New standards, and New roles, would shape a very interesting discussion. The term “culture” seems vague and does not fit with the sports management framework. More details on the mechanisms and how they were operationalised to achieve the “Cohesiveness” would be needed. E.g. how was a commitment of 5% of work time for the common good implemented and monitored? How was psychological safety achieved and what is the evidence of this? How was learning across different disciplines achieved? i.e. through joint fieldwork, shared data collection, different analysis approaches of the same data sets etc. What new standards of evaluation have emerged? How have new roles within the research groups evolved or been developed?
Under 3.4 Performing, sub-headings of e.g. Interpersonal structure, Performance, Activity. Under interpersonal structure, you have great material about the interactions between more advanced researchers and early career scientists. More details and explanations of the findings of the interactions between academic and non-academic partners would be very valuable especially in terms of the challenges to collaboration that these may present. Figure 3 needs considerably more explanation. Explain the scales – what exactly is meant by enabling, reinforcing, indivisible, constraining, counteracting, cancelling?
What are the reasons why some students start the process higher on the scale than others? It is interesting that COVID affected students differently and this seems worthy of some discussion and explanation.
Provision of supporting data for any statements made is essential. E.g. page 11, “Journey mapping results highlight how doctoral students enjoyed the most those papers where they were working in an interdisciplinary team”.
“At the beginning of their studies, the position of not being the corresponding author was found to increase their belongingness and psychological safety”.
“Regarding the growth as a researcher, ownership of their work, and an established role in the community, the 3-to-12-month research visits were found valuable.” From where have these findings been obtained and how many students do they relate to (e.g. interview with student No. X in 202X; workshop no X).In section 3.5, some discussion of whether the authors feel a fixed duration project in which all researchers start and finish together would generate a stronger collaboration than on ongoing, rolling project in which research start and finish at different times would be interesting.
Section 3.6 seems unnecessary and could be removed.
Additional comments
In the current form of the manuscript, the interdisciplinary aspects are not prominent. Therefore, consider changing the title, to replace “interdisciplinary” with “collaborative”.
Provide more details of the case study to give context e.g. where did funding come from and was collaborative research a specific objective of the funders, what was the background to the project, did the senior researchers have prior experience of working together etc.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2022-85-RC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
Dear Anonymous Referee,
on behalf of all authors, I sincerely thank you for your careful reading and constructive comments on our manuscript.
Based on your comments we will make major revisions to the manuscript, including:
1. Overall rewriting of the work, including descriptions of the project, used methods, and a more critical assessment of the sports team framework,
2. Reporting the sports literature review and the method description in a more systematic way,
3. Restructuring the Results and Discussion to align Tuckman’s model more strongly.These and other revisions are described in detail in our point-by-point replies to the comments in the supplementary pdf file.
Yours sincerely,
Maija Taka
-
AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Maija Taka, 17 May 2022
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