EESE: Development & Evaluation of a Work Practices Approach for Ethics Education in Science & Engineering

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This award is made under Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (NSF 05-532). The ethical conduct of investigators is critical to both progress in the sciences and public support for the scientific enterprise. Although many interventions exist that might be used to enhance ethical conduct, instructional interventions remain the most common. Unfortunately, these instructional interventions often have limited impact because they are not embedded in the day-to-day practices of the field and the strategies people apply in resolving ethical issues encountered in the course of their work. The intent of the proposed effort is to develop and evaluate a professional practice model for research ethics education. Initially, qualitative anthropological analyses of the professional practices and issue resolution strategies applied in a multi-disciplinary applied research center will be conducted. The results of these observational analyses will be used to identify day-to-day ethical issues arising in multidisciplinary centers, and social cognitive strategies used to resolve the work problems posed by these issues. Based on this information, an instructional program will be developed that is based on: 1) key actions leading to problem resolution, 2) effective strategies for executing these actions, and 3) practical steps that will support effective application of these strategies. This training will be delivered at four institutions participating in a multi-disciplinary center. The training will use an embedded instructional approach, involving both students and faculty in cooperative learning exercises intended to illustrate and provide practice in the application of effective strategies for resolving ethical issues arising in a center context. The effectiveness of this program will be evaluated using a multiple-site, multi-method approach that appraises program results with respect to individual-level outcomes (e.g., knowledge structures, decision-making) group-level outcomes (e.g., local site ethical climate, negative events), organizational-level outcomes (e.g., cross-site collaborations, new projects initiated by the center). If positive results are obtained in this multi-level, multi-measure evaluation effort, the program will be disseminated to other interdisciplinary centers and relevant fields in science and engineering. Intellectual Merit: This effort will provide an initial test of whether ethics education models based on day-to-day professional practice will provide a basis for the development of more effective educational programs. Additionally, this effort will help to identify the unique ethical issues arising in large multi-disciplinary applied research centers and the kind of strategies that can be applied to resolve these issues. Finally, this effort will provide measures for assessing ethical conduct, illustrating the impact of ethical conduct on individual, groups and organizational outcomes. Broader Impacts: The proposed effort will provide a new type of model curriculum that might be used to provide an alternative to the curricula currently being applied in ethics education in science and engineering fields. Additionally, key strategies for resolving the ethical issues encountered in applied multi-disciplinary research centers will be identified. An ethical education curriculum and evaluation measures will be developed for the three fields (meteorology, computer science, and electrical engineering) involved in the center being studied. Finally, new procedures for developing a curriculum addressing day-to-day ethical issues encountered in professional practice will be identified.