Understanding ethical decision‐making in design

Corple, Danielle; Zoltowski, Carla B.; Feister, Megan Kenny; Buzzanell, Patrice M.

doi:10.1002/jee.20312

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Another approach can be to design ethics instruction such that it involves direct interaction with stakeholders. For example in engineering design courses, stakeholder interaction has been found to trigger ethical reflection as it raises concrete ethical dilemmas that students need to address as an integral part of their design project (Corple et al, 2020).…”

Section: Instructorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the discursive construction of ethics in an introductory engineering course

Lönngren

2020

J of Engineering Edu

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Background Engineering education must prepare students to assume professional and ethical responsibility for the societal impacts of technology, but most engineering students do not receive adequate ethics teaching. In fact, engineering education has been described as characterized by a “culture of disengagement” in which ethical and societal concerns are constructed as different from and less important than purely technical concerns. Purpose/Hypothesis This study explores how a culture of disengagement is discursively constructed and perpetuated in engineering education by analyzing the discursive construction of ethics and ethical reflection in an introductory engineering course in Sweden. Design/Method The study is based on extensive ethnographic data in the form of field notes, lecture recordings, interview data, and course documents. The data are analyzed using a discourse analytic approach rooted in discourse theory. Results The results illustrate five processes through which ethics and ethical reflection are articulated as not the responsibility of the specific field of engineering, irrelevant for the profession, of low quality and status, and not very important for the engineering degree. Conclusions The results contribute to understanding how a culture of disengagement may be perpetuated in engineering education. The results also point toward pedagogical tools and strategies that instructors and program managers can use to construct ethics and ethical reflection as an advanced skill that is an important and integral part of engineering and engineering education—and thus better prepare future engineers to become responsible professionals.

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Section: Instructorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the discursive construction of ethics in an introductory engineering course

Lönngren

2020

J of Engineering Edu

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“…281-282). Though initially introduced as an approach to teaching ethical reasoning in engineering (Beever & Brightman, 2016), reflexive principlism has also occasionally been used as a research tool to analyze ethical decision-making among undergraduate engineering students (Corple et al, 2020;Hess et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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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“…Additionally, the continued rapid change and growth of advancements in science and technology, continuously present challenging situations to engineers related to ethics and values [5]. There is not enough research yet to understand how engineering students engage in the ethicaldecision making, hence the solutions are not very developed yet [6]. Furthermore, there is limited space in the engineering curriculum to incorporate and reinforce the professional skills that are not only important for the engineering development and sustainability but also required by the accrediting bodies in many countries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of How Capstone Teams Define Engineering Design Failure

Fayyaz¹

2021

PCEEA

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There is a growing trend in engineering education to increase the societal awareness among theengineering graduates, so that the engineering solutions proposed by the engineers are more sustainable. To achieve this, one of the efforts in Concordia University is to ask capstone students to discuss and implement (wherever possible) ethical, legal, social, environmental, and entrepreneurial aspects of their capstone design. Students are given two lectures during the capstone year which provides them with prompts to identify and think beyond their personal biases and perceptions of the society. At the end of the term, each capstone team is asked to define engineering failure. The aim for this is for graduating students to have a well thought of idea of the engineering design failure before they enter the workplace. This article explains the two phases (lectures) of the capstone lectures related to the ethical, legal, societal, environmental, and entrepreneurial aspects of an engineering design. Additionally, the article aims to analyze the definitions of engineering failure submitted by the engineering students at the end of the capstone year to identify keywords and terms that the graduating engineering students attribute to success and failure of an engineering design. The objective of the paper is to open the discussion among engineering educators for incorporating ideas in their courses that can improve engineering students’ understanding of a sustainable design and assess the success of these strategies.

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Understanding ethical decision‐making in design

Cited by 8 publications

References 24 publications

Exploring the discursive construction of ethics in an introductory engineering course

Exploring the discursive construction of ethics in an introductory engineering course

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

Analysis of How Capstone Teams Define Engineering Design Failure

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