A Narrative Approach to Ethics for S&E Graduate Students

该奖项是根据科学与工程伦理教育（NSF 05-532）颁发的。 本研究项目涉及教师和研究生对科学家和工程师研究生教育相关伦理问题的跨文化和跨学科观点。该研究小组由一名工程师、一名哲学家和一名心理学家组成，通过关注以下几个问题，对课堂上的研究进行了定性评估：跨文化和跨学科的观点是否容易在个人身上发现？如果是，如何做到？它们能否与伦理学理论结合在一起，成为一个连贯的、合理的整体？如果是，如何做到？这一整体能否适用于寻求在多文化和多学科社区中和谐运作的个人的道德决策？如果是，如何做到？这些研究问题正从五个目标进行审查。 首先是为期三年的研究目标，以产生学习模块，每个模块包括一个伦理主题，无论是科学或工程（SE），跨文化和跨学科的观点，个人对该主题，并系统地安排每个人的观点和该主题到一个处方的行为，可以容纳在多文化，多学科，美国社区。第二个是三年研究和教育目标，举办一系列研讨会，邀请外部专家参加该项目，并在第三年年底举办一次重要的全国研讨会。 第三是教育目标，即在第二年为研究生举办关于伦理学讲师单元的讲习班。第四是第三年的教育目标，观察讲师向研究生提供模块。第五，出版了一本教科书的所有模块，用于SE研究生的伦理教学。 该项目的主要活动是为第一个目标制定一种叙述方法。这种方法结合了本项目的三个主要参与者以前发表的作品：（1）心理学家使用自传来发现自我认同的非裔美国人种族因素，（2）使用神话故事来发现自己家庭或祖先中的英雄，这些英雄通过参考非洲的经验被认为是非裔美国工程师，值得在西方伦理情况下模仿，（3）非洲伦理与西方伦理的比较以及非洲伦理对西方价值观的适应。这个项目将扩展这些作品，包括亚洲，印度，西班牙裔和其他角度，并使他们适应在S E的伦理问题。 拟议的活动的智力价值是在人格的叙事理论，神话故事和比较伦理学的连贯安排的发展，并在该安排在科学和工程的实际问题的应用。 这是一项新颖的活动，有望提高科学家和工程师个人的伦理决策技能，而不要求他们成为伦理理论和论证方面的专家。相反，对这种专长的补偿是基于这样一种假设，即他们中的大多数人已经是可信故事的通才专家。 拟议的活动所产生的更广泛的影响将是对全球化进程和美国参与式民主管理其技术社会的适应性。 该项目向科学家和工程师承诺的跨文化赋权将使他们做好应对全球化挑战的准备，并承诺的跨学科赋权将使他们做好准备，在学术界，专业，政府和社会的商业部门以及向公民，专家和非专家开放的决策场所中发挥有效的领导作用。

This award is made under Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (NSF 05-532). This research project addresses cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives of faculty and graduate students on ethical issues relevant to the graduate education of scientists and engineers. The research team, composed of an engineer, a philosopher and a psychologist, is qualitatively assessing the delivery of the research in the classroom by focusing on several questions: Can cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives be readily discovered in individuals? If so, How? Can they be brought together with ethical theories into a coherent and justifiable whole? If so, How? Can that whole be applied to the ethical decision making of individuals seeking to function harmoniously in multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary communities? If so, How? These research questions are being examined with five objectives. First is the three-year research objective to produce study modules each consisting of an ethical topic in either science or engineering (S&E), cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary perspectives of individuals on that topic, and a systematic arrangement of each individual perspective and that topic into a prescription for behavior that can be accommodated in multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary, US communities. Second is the three-year research and education objective to conduct a seminar series bringing external experts to the project and culminating at the end of the third year in a major national symposium. Third is the educational objective to conduct workshops in the second year on modules for lecturers in ethics to graduate students. Fourth is the educational objective in the third year to observe as lecturers deliver modules to graduate students. Fifth is the publication of all modules in a textbook for the ethics instruction of S&E graduate students. The chief activity of this project is the development of a narrative approach to the first objective. This approach combines previous works published by the three principal participants of this project on (1) the uses by psychologists of auto-biographies to discover African American ethnic factors of self-identity, (2) the uses of mythic stories to discover heroes in one's own family or ancestry identified as African American engineers judged, by reference to African experiences, worthy of imitation in Western ethical situations, and (3) the comparison of African and Western ethics and the accommodation of African ethics to Western values. This project will extend these works to include Asian, Indian, Hispanic and other perspectives, and to adapt them to ethical problems in S&E. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity is in the development of a coherent arrangement of a narrative theory of personality, the mythic story, and comparative ethics, and in the application of that arrangement to practical problems in science and engineering. This is a novel activity promising to enhance the ethical decision making skills of individual scientists and engineers without requiring them to become specialist experts on ethical theory and argumentation. Rather, compensation for this specialty is made on the presumption that most of them are already generalist experts on believable stories. The broader impacts resulting from the proposed activity will be on the globalization process and the fitness of the US participatory democracy to govern its technological society. The cross-cultural empowerment promised by this project to scientists and engineers will ready them for the challenges of globalization, and the cross-disciplinary empowerment promised by it will ready them for effective leadership in academia, the professional, governmental, and business sectors of society, and in the decision making venues open to citizens, experts and non-experts in technological democracies.