Engineering Ethics as an Expert Guided and Socially Situated Activity

“科学与工程伦理教育奖”支持对工程学生研究团队的伦理决策进行研究，旨在改善工程学生的伦理教育，并最终促进专业工程师的伦理实践。本研究主要关注项目团队和研究实验室中伦理决策的群体动力学，以确定“伦理专家”的存在是否作为一种有效的资源来改善伦理决策。回答这个问题需要多学科的方法，包括实践伦理学和情境学习的理论工作，以及定性观察研究，包括小组项目中伦理决策的实验研究。该项目包括为情境、协作性伦理反思和问题解决开发一个规范的哲学框架，并将该框架应用于工程伦理培训。工程专业的研究生和本科生在现场进行伦理决策，并参与与“伦理专家”（关于技术伦理和社会问题的特殊伦理课程的学生）就其研究项目中出现的问题进行咨询的活动。实验研究比较了与“道德专家”互动的团队和不与“道德专家”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、教学理论以及科学和工程教育领域的贡献。具体来说，这个项目产生了关于专家和专业知识的可能性和作用以及在群体情况下构建责任和道德决策的方式的伦理新想法。本研究还探讨了道德心理学的一系列新现象，这些现象主要关注个人的道德决策，而不是群体反思、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展到伦理训练的案例和伦理教学法的选择，这将产生的结果将成为科学和工程教育中伦理训练新材料的基础。研究结果将通过期刊出版物和网络公开论坛广泛传播。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。通过本课程培训的工程师有望更容易地在专业环境中使用可用的资源，如道德办公室或监察员，并在团队决策中有效地发挥道德问题的作用。研究人员计划通过开发课程资源来跟进这个项目，将这种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.