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

在这个项目中，来自马里兰大学和加州大学的研究人员将建立案例研究账户，研究研究生和大四的工程专业学生如何在焦点小组设置的现实世界场景中应对复杂的道德决策时，将技术和道德推理结合起来。这项研究不仅评估了学生是否获得了伦理原则的基本知识，还评估了学生是否整合了他们的科学/技术知识、个人价值观和职业道德，并对混乱的现实世界场景进行了更深入的推理。为了模拟工作场所的团队，学生们将在小组中研究和讨论案例，他们将参与换位思考、角色扮演和其他类型的活动和讨论。对讨论视频的细粒度分析将使研究团队能够调查在社会科学案例研究的论证过程中，是什么触发、维持和/或破坏了伦理、情境、科学和技术以及社会影响因素的生产性编织。在项目的第三年，这项定性研究将为案例研究中提出的假设的大n探索提供调查工具，以及衡量现有伦理课程/项目在提高学生在伦理决策中参与科学和道德推理复杂相互作用的能力方面的有效性。用于焦点小组讨论的材料，以及学生参与这些材料的注释视频剪辑，将被打包为课程模块和引导者指南，为教师提供课堂话语的可能方向。该项目解决了工程师理解他们的科学和技术贡献对社会、伦理、环境、经济和政治影响的需要。研究成果和材料开发可以作为一个完整的学期课程或课程模块在本科和研究生水平的模型。从这个项目中产生的引导者指南将帮助教师调整课程以适应其机构的需要。丰富的定性数据将提供给研究界作进一步分析。这项工作的影响是通过建立学生如何学习将科学/技术推理与道德推理相结合的新知识，并通过开发课堂干预来支持这种综合推理，来解决传统工程课程中的缺陷。

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.