A Longitudinal Study of Social and Ethical Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Preliminary Results
A Longitudinal Study of Social and Ethical Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Preliminary Results
复制标题
工科本科生社会和道德责任的纵向研究：初步结果
作者：
Debra S. Fuentes;G. M. Warnick;B. Jesiek;R. Davies
对于攻读工程学位的学生，道德，社会责任和相关主题的培训是由各种利益相关者倡导的，在ABET认证要求中强制执行，主要由专业协会和许可机构承担。因此，几乎所有的工程专业学生都至少接受过一些工程伦理培训。此外，许多正式的课程和计划已经创建，以促进工程专业毕业生的道德诚信和专业责任，而各种其他干预措施（例如，服务学习计划）已经开发，以更广泛地挑战工程专业的学生，将自己视为社会参与的公民和专业人士。然而，令人惊讶的是，在本科工程专业学生中缺乏关于社会和道德责任发展的研究。很少有研究系统地考察了大量工程专业学生的道德知识水平、决策能力和社会责任承诺，更不用说考察这些指标如何随时间变化，以及受（或不受）特定类型学习经历的影响。因此，教师、管理人员和其他利益相关者几乎没有证据来指导高影响力课程和项目的创建。还有其他最近的研究表明，这种影响可能会被弥漫在许多工程学院的“脱离文化”所削弱。本文报道了美国国家科学基金会（NSF）支持的CCE STEM研究项目，旨在解决其中的一些差距。我们的研究解决了两个主要问题：·RQ 1：工程专业的学生认为什么是负责任的（和不负责任的）职业行为，他们认为什么是社会公正的（和不公正的）技术实践？RQ2：在四年制工程学位课程中，基本措施和对社会和道德责任的理解如何变化，无论是在一般情况下还是在与特定类型的学习经验有关的情况下？本文概述了纵向混合方法的研究设计，我们正在使用收集和分析定量和定性数据的本科工程专业学生在四所大学。这些学校代表了各种机构类型，每个学校都有学生参加特别感兴趣的课程，例如，涉及服务学习或强化道德操守教育的方案。我们的数据收集工作于2015年秋季初开始，从四所学校的757名第一学期工程专业学生中收集了调查问卷。该调查包括项目和措施有关的工程伦理知识，正义的信念，政治和社会参与，宏观伦理考虑，道德关注，道德脱离，道德气候和广泛的人口统计。重复测量将收集尽可能多的原始答卷人在他们的第五和第八学期。为了更深入地探讨感兴趣的结构和主题，我们还将在第一和第八学期对超过10%的调查受访者进行半结构化访谈。除了描述我们的研究设计外，本文还报告了我们研究第一阶段的初步见解。我们特别关注我们对调查数据的初步分析中的一些亮点，以及如何选择调查结果来对访谈样本进行分层，并调整访谈协议，以关注调查数据中观察到的一些模式。我们希望这篇论文将是感兴趣的学者参与教学和/或进行研究伦理，社会责任和相关主题。
For students pursuing engineering degrees, training in ethics, social responsibility, and allied topics is advocated by a variety of stakeholders, mandated in ABET accreditation requirements, and largely presumed by professional associations and licensing bodies. As a consequence, almost all engineering students have at least some exposure to engineering ethics training. Additionally, many formal courses and programs have been created to promote ethical integrity and professional responsibility among engineering graduates, while a variety of other interventions (e.g., service learning programs) have been developed to more broadly challenge engineering students to see themselves as socially engaged citizens and professionals. Nonetheless, there has been a surprising lack of research on development of social and ethical responsibility among undergraduate engineering students. Few studies have systematically examined levels of ethical knowledge, decision-making capabilities, and commitments to social responsibility among large numbers of engineering students, much less examined how such indicators change over time and are impacted (or not) by specific kinds of learning experiences. As a result, faculty, administrators, and other stakeholders have little evidence to guide creation of high-impact courses and programs. Still other recent research suggests that such impacts may be blunted by a “culture of disengagement” that pervades many engineering schools. This paper reports on an National Science Foundation (NSF) supported CCE STEM research project that aims to address some of these gaps. Our study addresses two main questions: • RQ1: What do engineering students perceive as responsible (and irresponsible) professional conduct, and what do they perceive as socially just (and unjust) technical practices?, and • RQ2: How do foundational measures and understandings of social and ethical responsibility change during a four-year engineering degree program, both in general and in relation to specific kinds of learning experiences? This paper offers an overview of the longitudinal mixed-methods study design we are using to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data from undergraduate engineering students at four universities. These schools represent a variety of institution types, and each has students in programs of particular interest, e.g., those involving service-learning or intensified ethics instruction. Our data collection efforts were initiated in early Fall 2015, with survey responses collected from 757 first-semester engineering students at four schools. The survey includes items and measures related to engineering ethics knowledge, justice beliefs, political and social involvement, macro-ethical considerations, moral attentiveness, moral disengagement, ethical climate, and extensive demographics. Repeat measures will be collected from as many of the original respondents as possible during their fifth and eighth academic semesters. To more deeply probe constructs and themes of interest, we will also conduct semi-structured interviews with more than 10% of survey respondents during their first and eighth academic semesters. In addition to describing our study design, this paper reports preliminary insights from the first phase of our study. We especially focus on some highlights from our initial analysis of the survey data, as well as how select survey results are being used to stratify the interview sample and tune the interview protocol to focus on some observed patterns in the survey data. We expect this paper will be of interest to scholars involved with teaching and/or conducting research on ethics, social responsibility, and related topics.