Effect of psychological safety on the interaction of students in teams

Abstract

CONTEXT Diverse contributions from team members have the potential to improve innovation in engineering student teams, but students must feel psychologically safe to contribute fully. Low psychological safety can decrease cohesion in teams and increase conflict. PURPOSE This study aims to explore trends in the psychological safety of students, teams, course sections and their effect on the interactions of students within the teams. METHODS We used multilevel (hierarchical) modeling to address our research question. The quality of teammate interaction is the outcome variable and is predicted by individual psychological safety in the first level, the team's average psychological safety in the second level, and the course sections' average psychological safety of students in the third level. RESULTS Based on the result, peer evaluations of the interaction each student has with team members (the outcome) can significantly be predicted by the psychological safety of a student and the level of psychological safety in teams. The sections' average psychological safety did not affect our outcome. CONCLUSIONS If we expect students to interact more with peers within the teams, we should make sure that psychological safety is high in both individual and team levels. It is possible that the lack of variability by the course section is a result of studying all the sections of a coordinated course.