Experiencing Ethical Engineering Practice

Kim, Dayoung; Hess, Justin L.; Fila, Nicholas D.

doi:10.18260/1-2--34632

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 9 publications

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“…Still others have taken a more retrospective approach to examine changing perceptions of engineering ethics. For example, Kim et al (2020) explored how critical incidents shape perceptions of ethical practice based on interviews with engineers in the health products industry. Even closer to the work presented in this paper, Rulifson and Bielefeldt (2019) carried out a longitudinal study of perceptions of socially responsible engineering (SRE) among engineering students (n = 21).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Reflexive Principlism to Investigate Longitudinal Changes in Engineering Students’ Perceptions of Ethics

Claussen,

Stepback,

Jesiek

et al. 2024

Studies in Engineering Education

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Background: Studies of changes in engineering students' perceptions of ethics and social responsibility over time have often resulted in mixed results or shown only small longitudinal shifts. Comparisons across different studies have been difficult due to the diverse frameworks that have been used for measurement and analysis in research on engineering ethics and have revealed major gaps between the measurement tools and instruments available to assess engineering ethics and the complexity of ethical and social responsibility constructs.Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to understand how engineering students' views of ethics and social responsibility change over the four years of their undergraduate degrees and to explore the use of reflexive principlism as an organizing framework for analyzing these changes.Design/Method: We used qualitative interviews of engineering students to explore multiple facets of their understanding of ethics and social responsibility. We interviewed 33 students in their first and fourth years of their undergraduate studies. We then inductively analyzed the pairs of interviews, using the reflexive principlism framework to formulate our findings. Results:We found that engineering students in their fourth year of studies were better able to engage in balancing across multiple ethical principles and specification of said ethical principles than they could as first year students. They most frequently referenced nonmaleficence and, to a lesser degree, beneficence as relevant ethical principles at both time points, and were much less likely to reference justice and autonomy. Conclusions:This work shows the potential of using reflexive principlism as an analytical framework to illuminate the nuanced ways that engineering students' views of ethics and social responsibility change and develop over time. Our findings suggest reflexive principlism may also be useful as a pedagogical approach to better equip students to specify and balance all four principles when ethical situations arise. 25 Claussen et al. Studies in Engineering

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%