Research Initiation: Expanding the Boundaries of Ethical Reasoning and Professional Responsibility in Engineering Education Through Critical Narrative

未来的雇主、高等教育机构和像Abet这样的认证机构都希望本科生工程专业毕业生具备批判性思维能力。批判性思维要求工程学学生做出明智的技术决策，其中包括不同的利益相关者和复杂的解决方案。为了培养他们的批判性思维，工科学生还应该学习道德和职业责任。研究表明，工程专业的学生需要有机会练习情感基础，而情感基础是参与处理与复杂的现实世界解决方案相关的无数问题所必需的。工程学的基本和基本原则要求致力于提高公共健康、安全和社区福利的职业理想，同时也承认社会、环境和经济因素之间的复杂相互作用。这项研究项目将通过调查批判性叙述在工程师职业形成中作为教和学工具的使用，重点关注工程伦理和职业责任。批评性叙事是结构化的、基于位置的故事，旨在促进受众以及特定文化和社区之间的联系。这项研究通过收集与工程专业学生的批判性思维、道德和职业责任相关的经验证据，支持NSF职业工程师形成(PFE)计划的既定目标。发展对工科学生如何看待他们所选择的职业的更广泛影响的理解，特别是通过道德和职业责任的角度来阐述，是解决职业形成的重要的第一步。目前的工程教育模式主要侧重于技术熟练程度，对这些更广泛的影响进行系统和综合的探索几乎没有留下什么空间。因此，本项目的目标是通过一种新的教育干预措施来提高工科本科生的批判性思维，旨在提高工科本科生的道德和职业责任感。对干预措施的评估将使用试验组和对照组进行。定量数据将包括工科学生对道德和职业责任评估(EPRA)调查的回答。定性数据将包括工科学生在两个学期的高中设计序列中对批判性叙述的书面回应，包括对公开可获得的批判性叙述的回应和学生的期末设计报告。研究人员将对这些书面文物进行编码，作为与道德和职业责任相关的批判性思维的证据。这项研究将为本科工程教育的潜在变革教学方法提供亟需的验证。通过将工程课程与学生围绕道德和职业责任的价值观的发展更紧密地联系起来，该项目将为未来的工程专业人员更有效地处理复杂问题奠定基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Future employers, institutions of higher education, and accreditors like ABET expect undergraduate engineering graduates to possess critical thinking skills. Critical thinking requires engineering students to make informed technical decisions that include diverse stakeholders and complex solutions. To achieve growth in their critical thinking, engineering students should also learn about ethics and professional responsibility. As research shows, engineering students need opportunities to practice the emotional infrastructure that’s required for engagement with myriad issues related to complex real-world solutions. The basic and foundational tenets of engineering require a commitment to professional ideals that elevate public health, safety, and the welfare of communities, while also acknowledging the complex interactions between social, environmental, and economic factors. This research project will focus on engineering ethics and professional responsibility by investigating the use of critical narratives as a teaching and learning tool in the professional formation of engineers. Critical narratives are structured, placed-based stories, intended to foster connections between the audience as well as specific cultures and communities. This research supports stated goals of the NSF Professional Formation of Engineers (PFE) program by gathering empirical evidence related to engineering students’ critical thinking, ethics, and professional responsibility. Developing an understanding of how engineering students perceive the broader impacts of their chosen profession, especially as articulated through the lens of ethics and professional responsibility, is an important first step in addressing professional formation. The current model of engineering education, focused primarily on technical proficiency, leaves little room for the structured and integrated exploration of these broader impacts. Therefore, this project’s goal is to improve critical thinking in undergraduate engineering students through a new educational intervention aimed at enhancing ethics and professional responsibility in undergraduate engineering students. Evaluation of the intervention will be performed using experimental and control groups. Quantitative data will consist of engineering student responses to the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) survey. Qualitative data will consist of engineering students’ written responses to critical narratives completed throughout their two-semester Senior Design sequence, including responses to publicly-available critical narratives and students’ final design reports. Researchers will code these written artifacts for evidence of critical thinking related to ethics and professional responsibility. This research will provide much-needed validation of a potentially transformative teaching method for undergraduate engineering education. By connecting the engineering curriculum more closely to the development of students’ values around ethics and professional responsibility, this project will lay the foundation for future engineering professionals to more effectively engage with complex problems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.