This is the primary mechanism at work in apprenticeship learning - where actions are modified by the learner based on how the results are appropriated and integrated by the more skilled of the two. 6. Sort of like one person thinking at the tree level, another at the forest level, and a third at the ecological level while all wrestle together with a problem about wood farming. Each takes responsibility for integrating consistency at their level of focus. Members of a collaborative group often have to justify why the thought is proceeding in a certain direction. This justification activity makes the strategic knowledge explicit, and has a mutual regulatory effect, which tends to keep the development on solid ground.
Collaborators attempt to keep each synchronized with the same level of understanding.
Each monitors the developing understandings in others, and attempts to correct any mis-conveyed or misunderstood communication. People are not talking at each other but with each other. A good collaboration will, however, produce a result that looks comfortably familiar to all participants - it is not one person's design or strategy or discovery with a few other ideas thrown in. The collaboration process helps everyone understand the total concept to the depth of ownership - even if some of the ideas don't get published exactly the way you would have resolved them, you at least understand why they are resolved the way they are. Collaboration does not remove the need for individual judgement.