Building Ethical Resilience Among College Students Using Metacognitive Approaches

对下一代大学生进行早期有效的科研道德培训是大学生科研道德教育的重要组成部分。该项目将为新兴的科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)专业人员开发、实施和测试一门大学级别的伦理决策课程，以更好地为他们在工作场所可能遇到的压力做好准备。这个项目通过关注影响人类行为的心理和社会因素，扩展了教授伦理决策的传统方法。该项目将为学生创造学习体验，以练习他们的道德决策技能。通过这个项目提供的培训旨在防止对研究诚信的威胁，并鼓励未来的STEM专业人员以道德的方式行事。这个项目关注的是统称为元认知的心理过程。元认知包括注意反思、自我监控和递归思维等过程。虽然元认知的讨论出现在伦理学教育领域，但该项目有一个独特的方法，它考察了情绪性、不确定性、压力的状况，以及社会因素的影响，如制度和文化规范，这些因素可能会影响研究者的元认知伦理推理。研究小组将开发和测试一门课程，该课程整合了关于社会认知的高级推理和反思，以及压力下基于启发式的决策。研究团队方法的特点包括融入为模拟教育和研究环境中的典型压力而构建的体验式模拟，并让学生学习如何克服他们可能面临的道德挑战。项目课程的影响将在课程开始和结束时以及课程结束后六个月进行评估。研究团队将开发培训培训者的部分，并将其与有兴趣将此模式应用于STEM伦理教育的教育工作者分享。该项目由社会、行为和经济科学局、数学和物理科学局以及STEM教育局通过ER2计划共同资助。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。

Training the next generation of college students early and effectively in research ethics is a crucial component of their education. This project will develop, implement, and test a college-level course in ethical decision-making for emerging science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals to better prepare them for the pressures they may encounter in the workplace. This project expands on traditional approaches to teaching ethical decision-making by focusing on psychological and social factors that impact human behavior. The project will create learning experiences for students to practice their ethical decision-making skills. The training provided through this project aims to prevent threats to research integrity and encourage future STEM professionals to behave ethically.This project focuses on psychological processes known collectively as metacognition. Metacognition includes processes such as mindful reflection, self-monitoring, and recursive thinking. Though discussion of metacognition appears in the ethics education field, the project has a unique approach in that it examines conditions of emotionality, uncertainty, stress, and the influence of social factors such as institutional and cultural norms that can impact a researcher's metacognitive ethical reasoning. The research team will develop and test a course curriculum that integrates advanced reasoning and reflection about social cognition and heuristic-based decision making under stress. Features of the research team’s approach include incorporating experiential simulations constructed to mimic typical pressures in educational and research settings, and having students learn how to overcome ethical challenges they may confront. The impact of the project’s curriculum will be assessed at the beginning and at the end of the course, and six-months after course completion. The research team will develop a train-the-trainer component and share it with educators interested in adopting this model for STEM ethics education.This project is jointly funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Directorate for STEM Education.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.