Efforts to promote equity in higher education often rely on shared intent among instructors and students. Yet, as demonstrated in this study, when students form their own teams for Team-Based Learning (TBL) tasks, they unintentionally cluster with peers of similar socio-economic backgrounds, ultimately undermining equity. This study introduces a simple strategy to facilitate equitable team formation through a quantitative reflection of students' socio-economic backgrounds and their self-perceived preparedness. When applied, the strategy yielded balanced teams and improved performance. In its absence, team compositions became skewed and class performance declined. These findings highlight a behavioural gap between intent and outcome and underscore the need for structural supports to translate equity goals into practice.

翻译：高等教育中促进公平的努力通常依赖于教师和学生之间的共同意图。然而，本研究证明，当学生为团队学习任务自行组建团队时，他们会无意中与具有相似社会经济背景的同龄人聚集，最终损害公平性。本研究引入一种简单策略，通过定量反映学生的社会经济背景及其自我感知的准备情况，以促进公平的团队组建。应用该策略后，团队构成更为均衡，且表现得到提升。反之，团队构成则出现偏斜，班级整体表现下降。这些发现揭示了意图与结果之间的行为差距，并强调了需要结构性支持以将公平目标转化为实践。