2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Teamwork is a skill considered essential for engineers to succeed in their workplace. This has led to teamwork and teamwork-related interventions becoming prominent in engineering education, especially in the form of project-based learning (PBL) and senior capstone projects. However, despite the increased number of teamwork opportunities for engineering students, there remain issues and gaps in how these skills are taught and assessed. These issues include faculty tending to assess the output of teamwork (e.g., final reports, prototypes) over the process of teamwork, and assuming that students will develop teamwork skills through experience rather than through more structured teaching. Prior work has highlighted that conflicts in first-year student teams are common and can erode team dynamics, leading to negative impacts on the team’s performance and students’ individual experience. These issues are particularly pronounced in the first-year PBL contexts where students have limited teamwork experience. Recent work has started to explore the role of psychological safety, or the belief that team members can take risks without fear of negative consequences, in engineering student teams. This study aims to advance knowledge on how student teams currently regulate their teamwork performance and identify specific approaches that students and instructors can take to foster team psychological safety and enhance students’ ability to resolve conflicts within their teams.

This study employs Rousseau et al.’s (2006) framework of teamwork behaviors to explore how faculty and student practices influence psychological safety, conflict management, and regulation of teamwork performance in first-year engineering project teams. The following research questions guide the study: (1) How do engineering students foster psychological safety, manage conflict, and regulate their team performance (e.g., cooperation, intrateam coaching) in their first-year teams? (2) How do students’ perceptions of psychological safety influence how they manage conflict and regulate their team performance while working on first-year teams? (3) How do faculty instructional and assessment practices influence engineering students’ team psychological safety, conflict management, and regulation of team performance?

To address these questions, the project will use a multiple-case study research design that involves two first-year engineering courses of contrasting natures: one at a public R1 university and another at a private R2 university. Data are currently being collected from students and instructors in the form of focus groups, individual interviews, instructional materials, and artifacts generated by team members while working on the course project. These data will be deductively analyzed using Rousseau’s integrative teamwork behavior framework to understand how faculty and student practices shape psychological safety, conflict management, and regulation of performance within teams. The findings from this study will address critical gaps in how first-year students monitor and adapt their teamwork behaviors, as well as how faculty practices affect this adaptation. Specifically, the project’s salient contribution lies in exploring teamwork practices from the lens of psychological safety, which is an understudied area in engineering education. In doing so, we aim to inform the development of pedagogical interventions that can support students’ ability to cultivate psychological safety, manage conflict, and regulate their teamwork performance in engineering education PBL contexts. This study is funded by the NSF Research in Formation of Engineers (RFE) program.