Collaborative Research: Modeling the dynamics of integrated technical and moral reasoning in contexts of socio-scientific issues

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In this project, researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of California will build case-study accounts of the dynamics of how graduate and senior undergraduate engineering students integrate technical and moral reasoning as they grapple with the complexities of ethical decision-making about a real-world scenario in a focus-group setting. The research evaluates not just whether students gain basic knowledge of ethics principles, but also whether, and in response to what contextual and instructional cues, students integrate their scientific/technical knowledge, personal values, and professional ethics to reason more deeply about messy real-world scenarios. To simulate workplace teams, students will research and discuss the cases in small groups, and they will engage in perspective-taking, role-playing, and other kinds of activities and discussions. Fine-grained analysis of video of discussion sessions will enable the research team to investigate what triggers, sustains, and/or disrupts the productive weaving of ethical, situational, scientific and technical, and social impact considerations during argumentation on socio-scientific case studies. In the third year of the project, this qualitative research will inform creation of survey tools for large-N exploration of hypotheses suggested by the case-studies, as well as for measuring effectiveness of existing ethics curricula/programs in improving students' ability to attend to the complex interplay of scientific and moral reasoning in ethical decision-making. The materials used for focus group discussions, accompanied by annotated video clips of students engaging with those materials, will be packaged as curriculum modules and facilitator guides that provide instructors with a feel for possible directions of classroom discourse.The project addresses the need for engineers to understand the social, ethical, environmental, economic, and political impact of their scientific and technological contributions. The research findings and materials developed can serve as a model for a full semester course or course modules at undergraduate and graduate levels. Facilitator guides produced from this project will help instructors adapt the course to their institutional needs. Rich qualitative data will be made available to the research community for additional analyses. The impact of this work is to address deficiencies in traditional engineering curricula by building new knowledge of how students learn to integrate scientific/technical reasoning with moral reasoning, and by developing classroom interventions to support this integrated reasoning.