Collaborative Research: Foundations of Social and Ethical Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Comparing Across Time, Institutions, and Interventions

认识到技术专业人员在服务公众和应对重大挑战方面发挥的关键作用，已经创建了许多正式的课程和计划，以促进工程专业毕业生的职业责任和道德操守。开发了其他干预措施(例如，服务学习计划)，以更广泛地挑战工程和技术专业的学生，让他们将自己视为参与其中的公民和社区成员。然而，这类学生对社会和道德责任的基本理解一直缺乏研究，包括这些理解是如何随着时间的推移和通过参与特定类型的学习经历而变化的。需要额外的实证证据来指导正在进行的努力，以培养未来工程师的社会和道德责任，包括通过确定和促进对学生产生最大积极影响的具体干预措施。拟议的研究通过提出以下研究问题来回应现有学术中的这些空白：1)工程专业学生认为什么是负责任(和不负责任的)职业行为，他们认为什么是社会公正(和不公正)的技术实践？2)在四年制工程学位课程期间，对社会和道德责任的基本衡量标准和理解是如何变化的，无论是总体上还是与特定类型的学习经历有关？为了研究这些问题，一项纵向混合方法研究设计将收集和分析四所大学工科本科生的定量和定性数据。为了提高成果的可转移性，这些学校将代表各种机构类型。每个合作学校也有大量的学生参加感兴趣的项目，例如服务性学习和强化体操教学。此外，这项研究将优先调查未被充分代表的学生群体在感知和体验方面的差异。

Recognizing the critical roles played by technical professionals in serving the public and addressing grandchallenges, many formal courses and programs have been created to promote professional responsibilityand ethical integrity among engineering graduates. Other interventions (e.g., service learning programs)have been developed to more broadly challenge engineering and technology students to see themselves asengaged citizens and community members. Yet there has been a lack of research on foundationalunderstandings of social and ethical responsibility among such students, including how theseunderstandings change over time and through participation in specific types of learning experiences.Additional empirical evidence is needed to guide ongoing efforts to cultivate enhanced social and ethicalresponsibility among future engineers, including by identifying and promoting specific interventions thathave the biggest positive impacts on students.The proposed study responds to these gaps in the existing scholarship by asking the following researchquestions: 1) What do engineering students perceive as responsible (and irresponsible) professionalconduct, and what do they perceive as socially just (and unjust) technical practices?, and 2) How dofoundational measures and understandings of social and ethical responsibility change during a four-yearengineering degree program, both in general and in relation to specific kinds of learning experiences? Toinvestigate these questions, a longitudinal mixed-method study design will collect and analyzequantitative and qualitative data from undergraduate engineering students at four universities. To improvetransferability of results, these schools will represent a variety of institution types. Each collaboratingschool also has large numbers of students in programs of interest, e.g., service-learning and intensifiedethics instruction. Further, the study will give priority to investigating differences in perceptions andexperiences among underrepresented student populations.