A Systematic Review of Engineering Students in Intercultural Teamwork: Characteristics, Challenges, and Coping Strategies

Abstract

In response to the challenges posed by globalization and internationalization, engineering education programs are increasingly focused on knowledge, technologies, and competence that meet global needs. Against this backdrop, higher engineering students are often encouraged to collaborate in teams with others from diverse, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds, for the purpose of preparing them to accommodate change and innovation across international working contexts. Within a growing number of intercultural systematic and meta-analysis reviews in engineering education, little attention has been paid to intercultural team characteristics, and even less has been given to the challenges of intercultural teamwork and the relevant coping strategies. Using a systematic approach, this paper reviewed 77 journal articles to identify the intercultural team characteristics of engineering students based on team formats, level of collaboration, learning goals, evaluation methods, and learning gains. Through the process of intercultural collaboration, several challenges and corresponding coping strategies were reported at the individual, relational, and contextual levels. Recommendations for future practice for engineering educators and programs faculties, and future research directions for engineering educational researchers, are proposed in order to support engineering students’ intercultural team learning.