Engineering Ethics as an Expert Guided and Socially Situated Activity

该科学与工程伦理教育奖支持工程专业学生研究团队的伦理决策研究，旨在改善工程专业学生的伦理教育，并最终改善专业工程师的伦理实践。该研究的重点是在项目团队和研究实验室的伦理决策的群体动力学，以确定是否存在的“伦理专家”作为一个有效的资源，以提高伦理决策。解决这个问题需要一个多学科的方法，涉及实践伦理学和情境学习的理论工作，以及定性的观察研究，包括小组项目中的伦理决策的实验研究。该项目包括制定一个规范性的哲学框架，用于情景，协作道德反思和解决问题，并将该框架应用于工程道德培训。工程专业的研究生和本科生在现场进行道德决策，并参加活动，与“道德专家”-参加关于技术中的道德和社会问题的特别道德课程的学生-就他们的研究项目中出现的问题进行咨询。实验研究比较了与“道德专家”互动和不互动的团队的行为和结果。“这项研究的智力价值包括对哲学伦理学、道德心理学、教育理论以及科学和工程教育领域的贡献。具体来说，这个项目产生了新的想法，在伦理学的可能性和作用的专家和专业知识，以及责任和道德决策的方式，可以在群体的情况下构建。本研究还调查了一系列新的现象，道德心理学，这主要集中在道德决策的个人，而不是对群体的反思，决策和道德责任的社会分配的动态。该建议将情境学习方法扩大到伦理培训案例和伦理教学法的选择，这将产生的成果将成为科学和工程教育伦理培训新材料的基础。结果将通过期刊出版物和网上公开论坛广泛传播。这项研究将对当前强调抽象原则、个人责任和极端情况案例研究的工程伦理教育实践产生更广泛的影响。根据这一计划培训的工程师预计将更容易地使用他们在其专业环境中可用的资源，如道德操守办公室或监察员，并有效地发挥作用，在团队决策有关道德问题。研究人员计划通过开发课程资源来跟进这个项目，以将这种类型的培训扩展到其他项目和机构。

This Ethics Education in Science and Engineering award supports a study of ethical decision making in research teams of engineering students, with the aim of improving ethics education for engineering students and ultimately ethical practice among professional engineers. The study focuses on the group dynamics of ethical decision making in project teams and research labs to determine whether the presence of an "ethics expert" acts as an effective resource to improve ethical decision making. Answering this question requires a multidisciplinary approach involving theoretical work in both practical ethics and situated learning as well as qualitative observational research that includes experimental studies of ethical decision making in group projects. The project includes developing a normative philosophical framework for situational, collaborative ethical reflection and problem solving, and applying that framework to ethics training for engineering. Graduate and undergraduate students in engineering are observed in ethical decision making in situ and participate in activities where they consult with "ethics experts" -- students in a special ethics course about ethical and social issues in technology -- about concerns arising in their research projects. Experimental studies compare the behavior and results produced by teams that do and do not interact with the "ethics experts." The intellectual merits of this research include contributions to the fields of philosophical ethics, moral psychology, pedagogical theory, and science and engineering education. Specifically, this project generates new ideas in ethics about the possibility and role of experts and expertise and the way that responsibility and ethical decision making can be constructed in group situations. This study also investigates a new range of phenomena for moral psychology, which has primarily focused on ethical decision making by individuals rather than on the dynamics of group reflection, decision making, and the social distribution of moral responsibility. The proposal expands the situated learning approach to cases of ethical training and the options for ethics pedagogy, which will generate results that will be the basis of new materials for ethics training in science and engineering education. Results will be widely disseminated via journal publications and open forums on the web. This research will have broader impacts on the current practices of engineering ethics education that emphasize abstract principles, individual responsibility, and case studies of extreme situations. Engineers trained according to this program are expected to more readily use the resources available to them in their professional environments, such as an ethics office or ombudsperson, and to function effectively in team decision making about ethical issues. The researchers plan follow up this project by developing curricular resources to expand this type of training to other programs and institutions.