Technologies and human values both have important bearing on human life and conditions. Unfortunately, the dialogue between them has remained inadequate, at best. While the discourse on human values recognizes various kinds and layers of values, including values that are universally relevant across societies and cultures, research on the interface between values and technology has predominantly focused on technology’s interactions with society-specific values. This article is an attempt to broaden the scope of this research by specifically taking the case of (...) cremation technologies. Numerous societal, religious and universal values interplay with each other in matters related to death and the dead. Unlike other technologies, an individual can ‘use’ cremation technology only once, that too with limited control over his/her choice. Our empirical research finds that a complex interaction of multiple layers of values shapes the form and trajectory of cremation technology. Tracking the debate on the adoption of... (shrink)

One of the core problems with engineering ethics education is perceptual. Although ethics is meant to be a central component of today’s engineering curriculum, it is often perceived as a marginal requirement that must be fulfilled. In addition, there is a mismatch between faculty and student perceptions of ethics. While faculty aim to communicate the nuances and complexity of engineering ethics, students perceive ethics as laws, rules, and codes that must be memorized. This paper provides some historical context to better (...) understand these perceptual differences, and suggests that curriculum constraints are important contributing factors. Drawing on the growing scholarship of student engagement approaches to pedagogy, the paper explores how students can be empowered to effect change in the broader engineering curriculum through engineering ethics. The paper describes a student engagement approach to pedagogy that includes students as active participants in curriculum design—a role that enables them to critically reflect about why ethics is a requirement. Including students in the process of curriculum design leads students to reframe ethics as an integrative tool with the capacity to bring together different engineering departments and build bridges to non-engineering fields. This paper argues that students can and should play an active and important role in relocating ethics from the periphery to the core of the engineering curriculum. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

In the last decades, a great amount of research has advocated innovating science education through teaching contents of the history, sociology, and philosophy of science in order for the students to get a reliable image of science, significant and relevant learning experiences, and higher interest and engagement in science. Given the embeddedness of techno-scientific systems in contemporary societies, the science-technology-society (STS) movement suggested the simple initiative of teaching science through making explicit the interrelationships between science, scientists, technology, and society to (...) achieve these aims. Since then, the STS tradition has evolved and produced some conceptual variations. This paper deals with three of these variations that are currently the key areas of school science education research and teaching: “socio-scientific issues,” “scientific literacy for all,” and “nature of science.” As heirs of the STS tradition, these mottos embody, at the same time, a clear continuity with STS origins, and some discontinuities, which arise from the development of their own paradigms, adding original elements to the STS movement. (shrink)