Teacher strategies that foster students’ boundary-crossing expertise when addressing problems with wicked tendencies

Figures & data

Table 1. Selected courses.

Course	Programme(s)	Student level	Duration (semesters)	ECTS
Social Enterprise	Interdisciplinary. Programmes from the business domain (e.g. business administration, finance and control, marketing management, human resource management)	Third/fourth year	1	13
Sustainable Cities	Interdisciplinary. Mainly programmes from the business domain (e.g. human resource management, business administration) and the technology domain (e.g. civil engineering)	Third/fourth year	1	9
Urban Health	Interdisciplinary. Programmes from any domain (e.g. (socio-psychiatric) nursing, sport studies, applied gerontology, pedagogy, social work, communication, law, marketing management, and pharmacology)	Third/fourth year	1	30
District Intervention	Social Work	First year	1	10
Good Life	Applied Gerontology	Second year	2	24
Network Building	Global Project & Change Management	Third/fourth year	1	20

Table 2. Typology of the six cases.

Case	Overall problem addressed and specific examples	Problem selection		Stakeholders involved				Goals/assignments			Plenary stakeholder interactions
		Student-initiated	Teacher-initiated	Commissioners	Individual persons, residents, clients customers	Representatives of organizations, businesses, other entities	Students from other disciplines	Boundary awareness	Boundary work	Personal learning goals	Stakeholders at course level	Matching sessions	In-between sessions	Final presentations
Social Enterprise	Sustainable, social entrepreneurship: Relocating a restaurant area in a care home Food waste reduction Real price of organic food	x		x	x	x	x	x	x		x
Sustainable Cities	Smart, inclusive, sustainable cities: Smart and innovative E-health hub Matching sponsors/co-creators for international horticultural exhibition Business-park maintenance yielding social return on investment		x	x	x	x	x	x	x		x	x
Urban Health	Health of young urban populations: Drug use among young people Collaboration between social services and food bank Healthy sports canteens		x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x	x
District Intervention	Social cohesion: Loiterers Division between buyers and tenants Individualisation of society	x			x	x		x	x	x
Good Life	Ageing population: Fostering intergenerational contact Access to public toilets increasing mobility Games fostering contact and participation	x		x	x	x		x	x	x	x	x	x	x
Network Building	Civil society: Homogenisation in world cities Financial stress-related depression amongst students Natural Disaster Recovery through Community Empowerment	x			x	x		x	x	x				x

Table 3. Data collection.

Case	Interviews				Observations			Document study^1
	Teachers (T0)	Teachers (T1)	Students	Stakeholders	Group presentations	Group size	Presence of stakeholders	Reference framework	Student manuals/assessment forms	Course materials/assignments	Deliverables	Learning journals/reflection reports	Feedback from stakeholders/peers
Social Enterprise	1	3	9		9	4-6			x	x
Sustainable Cities	2	2	5	2	1	5	x		x	x	x
Urban Health	3	4	2	1	6	4-6	x	x	x
District Intervention	5	2	8		8	4-6		x	x	x	x	x
Good Life	2	2	6	2	5	2-3	x		x	x
Network Building	3^2	3			10	2-3	x	x	x	x	x	x	x

Data collection: ¹x = applicable; ²Took place at T1 in retrospect

Table 4. Coding categories: examples.

Coding category	Code	Description	Example
Dimension of wickedness: Complexity	System-like nature of the problem	Characteristic manifestation of complexity in the problem at stake: complexity of information, interdependencies, and the presence of various subsystems and interrelated subproblems.	‘Students often find it hard to see the bigger picture and the context in which it [the problem] is placed … and the angles from which it can be seen. You can look at it from a sustainability perspective, a financial perspective, a social perspective. I think they usually kind of get that, but they tend to get stuck at a certain level of abstraction.’ (Teacher, Social Enterprise)
Dimension of wickedness: Value divergence	Mutually-shared character of the outcome	Characteristic manifestation of value divergence in the outcome of the problem-solving process: incorporation of a diversity of stakeholder perspectives in the (proposed) solutions, resulting from a participatory approach.	Student 1: ‘So, with the idea of building a youth centre, one automatically excludes other groups. That feedback that she gave us was really helpful. Though we didn’t really change anything, we learned from it …’ Student 2: ‘Yes, we couldn’t do much about it, because we focus on loiterers, but it is something to take into consideration.’ (District Intervention)
Learning mechanism: Identification	Othering	Defining practices in relation to one another, delineating differences.	Student 1: ‘We wanted to take concrete action right away, and also get clarity about the assignment [from the commissioner]. But we learned that it is important to first …’ Student 2: ‘To read …’ Student 1: ‘To first get to know the exposition as an organisation, with everything around it, to have more knowledge about it … Because it helps us to understand and carry out the assignment in a better way.’ (Sustainable Cities)
Learning mechanism: Coordination	Routinization	Finding/using procedures by means of which coordination is becoming part of automatised or operational practice.	‘It evolves, when you visit them throughout the months. Of course, everyone has developed a different relation with their elderly person. But I think everyone has visited them at home. I was able to build some trust. You have to adapt a bit, because you are a guest in someone’s home. The connection felt a bit like friendship.’ (Student, Good Life)
Learning mechanism: Transformation	Recognition of shared problem space	Recognition of shared problem space by people involved in the problem-solving process, often in response to a lack or need.	‘It was great to have this focus group meeting. We had almost all parties together. Actually, all of them. During the meeting, the discussion between people went like: “Hey, we can do this”, and “Hey, this is the problem”, and “We agree”. So we got more and more support and recognition of the problem and also the solution.’ (Student, Urban Health)
Boundary crossing support	Brokering	Brokering by teachers who participate in different contexts	‘The ideal teacher in a comaker is the intermediary. On the one hand he empowers students with the right knowledge and skills, and with the right mentality, as support. And on the other hand the teacher should be well-attuned to students, to sense how things are going between students and commissioner. Instead of standing on the side line, so to speak, he should stay in the middle.’ (Stakeholder, Sustainable Cities)
Boundary crossing support	Supervision	Support by teachers in coping with experienced boundaries and related tensions.	‘At the beginning of the year the teachers said that although learning new things is central to Good Life, we had to be aware of our personal limits. And I do think they have stimulated us to take steps, without going too far.’ (Student, Good Life)
Boundary crossing support	Destructive tension (subcode of supervision)	Markers of tension that hinders learning, experienced by students as observed by teachers and/or expressed by students.	‘Defining the problem is a learning process in itself. And in this case, the multidisciplinary context and the multitude of stakeholders are an additional complicating factor for students. Like: “We have to deal with multiple parties, and on top, we don’t fully understand the needs and assignments.” And you see that students tend to get passive, sometimes. Because they don’t know what to do.’ (Teacher, Sustainable Cities)

Table 5. Illustration of the steps taken to identify the teacher strategy Enabling multiperspectivity.

Step	Procedure	Description of outcome
1. Identification of relationships between learning mechanisms and addressing wickedness	Assumption: addressing problems with wicked tendencies requires boundary awareness through learning alternative ways of observing uncertainty, complexity and fragmentation. Exploration of relationship between boundary awareness and observing wickedness by exploring the codes reflection (including perspective making and perspective taking), and the codes for the dimensions of wickedness (including sub-codes for problem, process and outcome features of each dimension) with matrix coding queries.	Insight into how reflection contributed to observing wickedness: joint exploration of ways to balance and combine different interests (perspective-making) contributed to the observation of diverging values; observation of uncertainties, such as the impact of possible constraints and assessing the need of possible adaptations; observation of the complexity of the problems at stake, such as the interrelatedness with other issues to be taken into account.
2. Identification of issues relating to the four learning mechanisms	Any issues that students encountered relating to reflection (and the sub-processes perspective making and perspective taking), including the absence of reflection at points where it might be expected given the formulated assumption and what was learned from step 1 were identified.	Identified issue: narrow focus on one party, disregarding or ignoring of other perspectives.
3. Identification of signals for teachers pointing to these issues	Any signals pointing to the issue identified in step 2 were identified by using markers of students’ constructive and destructive tension as sub-codes for the form of boundary-crossing support supervision.	Markers of students’ constructive and destructive tension: Tendency to focus on one party, hesitations to contact other people or representatives from other organisations, procrastination, declining invitations for events/opportunities to meet a diversity of stakeholders.
4. Identification of tactics of teachers to deal with the issues encountered by students	Exploration of relationships between Reflection and the seven ways of support (i.e. brokering, boundary objects; fostering boundary interaction; organised reflection; optimising degrees of clarity; optimizing degrees of freedom; supervision) using matrix coding queries.	Brokering: Participation of teachers; Boundary objects: Procedures to foster dialogue (i.e. dialogue tables, emotional touch point technique); Fostering boundary interaction: Introducing new stakeholder perspectives gradually; involving a diversity of stakeholders in organised sessions; Organized reflection: Joint reflection on students’ boundary interactions (boundary work) involving a broader group of stakeholders to evoke and clarify identification and reflection processes; Supervision: Optimizing degrees of tension, e.g. by introducing new parties/perspectives step by step.