Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that CS programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern’s program that embeds values analysis modules into CS courses. The resulting data suggest (...) that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they’ll likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought. (shrink)

This study develops a Science–Technology–Society (STS)-based science ethics education program for high school students majoring in or planning to major in science and engineering. Our education program includes the fields of philosophy, history, sociology and ethics of science and technology, and other STS-related theories. We expected our STS-based science ethics education program to promote students’ epistemological beliefs and moral judgment development. These psychological constructs are needed to properly solve complicated moral and social dilemmas in the fields of science and engineering. (...) We applied this program to a group of Korean high school science students gifted in science and engineering. To measure the effects of this program, we used an essay-based qualitative measurement. The results indicate that there was significant development in both epistemological beliefs and moral judgment. In closing, we briefly discuss the need to develop epistemological beliefs and moral judgment using an STS-based science ethics education program. (shrink)

Professional communities are experiencing scandals involving unethical and illegal practices daily. Yet it should not take a national major structure failure to highlight the importance of ethical awareness and behavior, or the need for the development and practice of ethical behavior in engineering students. Development of ethical behavior skills in future engineers is a key competency for engineering schools as ethical behavior is a part of the professional identity and practice of engineers. While engineering educators have somewhat established instructional methods (...) to teach engineering ethics, they still rely heavily on teaching ethical awareness, and pay little attention to how well ethical awareness predicts ethical behavior. However the ability to exercise ethical judgement does not mean that students are ethically educated or likely to behave in an ethical manner. This paper argues measuring ethical judgment is insufficient for evaluating the teaching of engineering ethics, because ethical awareness has not been demonstrated to translate into ethical behavior. The focus of this paper is to propose a model that correlates with both, ethical awareness and ethical behavior. This model integrates the theory of planned behavior, person and thing orientation, and spheres of control. Applying this model will allow educators to build confidence and trust in their students’ ability to build a professional identity and be prepared for the engineering profession and practice. (shrink)

The evidence from the recent financial crisis in the USA indicates the importance of ethical decision making in the banking and finance industry. This study surveyed 90 banking and finance professionals and students in Vietnam to examine the differences in their ethical decision making. The questionnaire consisted of eight vignettes describing practical ethical dilemmas which banking and finance professionals may face in their daily work. We found significant differences in ethical decision making between these two groups in their overall ethical (...) scores and in four out of eight vignettes. We also conducted a 3-h ethics training programme for these professionals and students and found that teaching ethics was more effective for students than working adults in the banking and finance industry. These findings are important as they show how banking and financial institutions can make workplace environments more conducive to ethical decision-making by enhancing ethics education for both newcomers and existing professionals. (shrink)

The research described here contributes to the extant empirical research on business ethics education by examining outcomes drawn from the literature on positive organizational scholarship (POS). The general research question explored is whether a course on ethical decision-making in business could positively influence students’ confidence in their abilities to handle ethical problems at work (i.e., moral efficacy), boost the relative importance of ethics in their work lives (i.e., moral meaningfulness), and encourage them to be more courageous in raising ethical problems (...) at work even if it is unpopular (i.e., moral courage). Specifically, the study used a rigorous quasi-experimental pretest–posttest research design with a treatment (N = 30) and control group (N = 30) to investigate whether a graduate-level course in business ethics could influence students’ levels of moral efficacy, meaningfulness, and courage. Findings revealed that participants in the business ethics treatment course experienced significant positive increases in each of the three outcome variables as compared to the control group. The largest increase was in moral efficacy, followed by moral courage, and finally, moral meaningfulness. These findings are discussed in the context of the current research on business ethics education and POS. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

BackgroundMoral case deliberation as a form of clinical ethics support is usually implemented in health care institutions and educational programs. While there is no previous research on the use of clinical ethics support on the level of health care regulation, employees of regulatory bodies are regularly confronted with moral challenges. This pilot study describes and evaluates the use of MCD at the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate.The objective of this pilot study is to investigate: 1) the current way of dealing with (...) moral issues at the IGZ; 2) experience with and evaluation of MCD as clinical ethics support, and 3) future preferences and needs regarding clinical ethics support for dealing with moral questions at the IGZ.MethodsWe performed an explorative pilot study. The research questions were assessed by means of: 1) interviews with MCD participants during four focus groups; and 2) interviews with six key stakeholders at the IGZ. De qualitative data is illustrated by data from questionnaires on MCD outcomes, perspective taking and MCD evaluation.ResultsProfessionals do not always recognize moral issues. Employees report a need for regular and structured moral support in health care regulation. The MCD meetings are evaluated positively. The most important outcomes of MCD are feeling secure and learning from others. Additional support is needed to successfully implement MCD at the Inspectorate.ConclusionWe conclude that the respondents perceive moral case deliberation as a useful form of clinical ethics support for dealing with moral questions and issues in health care regulation. (shrink)

Global society is facing formidable current and future problems that threaten the prospects for justice and peace, sustainability, and the well-being of humanity both now and in the future. Many of these problems are related to science and technology and to how they function in the world. If the social responsibility of scientists and engineers implies a duty to safeguard or promote a peaceful, just and sustainable world society, then science and engineering education should empower students to fulfil this responsibility. (...) The contributions to this special issue present European examples of teaching social responsibility to students in science and engineering, and provide examples and discussion of how this teaching can be promoted, and of obstacles that are encountered. Speaking generally, education aimed at preparing future scientists and engineers for social responsibility is presently very limited and seemingly insufficient in view of the enormous ethical and social problems that are associated with current science and technology. Although many social, political and professional organisations have expressed the need for the provision of teaching for social responsibility, important and persistent barriers stand in the way of its sustained development. What is needed are both bottom-up teaching initiatives from individuals or groups of academic teachers, and top-down support to secure appropriate embedding in the university. Often the latter is lacking or inadequate. Educational policies at the national or international level, such as the Bologna agreements in Europe, can be an opportunity for introducing teaching for social responsibility. However, frequently no or only limited positive effect of such policies can be discerned. Existing accreditation and evaluation mechanisms do not guarantee appropriate attention to teaching for social responsibility, because, in their current form, they provide no guarantee that the curricula pay sufficient attention to teaching goals that are desirable for society as a whole. (shrink)

Moral reasoning typically relates unexpectedly weakly with both Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. Although researchers often explain this by pointing to apparent shortcomings in both the construct and the measure of moral reasoning, such explanations are questionable given the many instances of support for hypotheses involving moral reasoning using the same construct and measure. As these latter cannot only sometimes be flawed, we explored the possible influence of moral reasoning index choice on observed results by using multiple indices available in the Defining (...) Issues Test. In a sample of 201 employed persons surveyed in 1998, with results reported for the first time, advanced moral reasoners tended to be neither Machiavellian nor authoritarian. However, the specific moral reasoning index employed was critical to detecting these hypothesized inverse relationships. Specifically, we proposed that currently unavailable D scores would be the relevant index for examining inverse relationships with Machiavellianism and that P scores would be most appropriate in the context of inverse relationships with authoritarianism, particularly among persons inclined to utilize their characteristic moral reasoning. We extrapolate the conceptual logic underpinning such relationships, and suggest that appropriate index choice flows from this logic and is essential to hypothesis testing across a broad array of constructs. Future research could adopt this logic to examine relationships involving constructs with implications similar to those found in Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

This project explored what constitutes “ethical practice of mathematics”. Thematic analysis of ethical practice standards from mathematics-adjacent disciplines (statistics and computing), were combined with two organizational codes of conduct and community input resulting in over 100 items. These analyses identified 29 of the 52 items in the 2018 American Statistical Association Ethical Guidelines for Statistical Practice, and 15 of the 24 additional (unique) items from the 2018 Association of Computing Machinery Code of Ethics for inclusion. Three of the 29 items (...) synthesized from the 2019 American Mathematical Society Code of Ethics, and zero of the Mathematical Association of America Code of Ethics, were identified as reflective of “ethical mathematical practice” beyond items already identified from the other two codes. The community contributed six unique items. Item stems were standardized to, “The ethical mathematics practitioner…”. Invitations to complete the 30-min online survey were shared nationally (US) via Mathematics organization listservs and other widespread emails and announcements. We received 142 individual responses to the national survey, 75% of whom endorsed 41/52 items, with 90–100% endorsing 20/52 items on the survey. Items from different sources were endorsed at both high and low rates. A final thematic analysis yielded 44 items, grouped into “General” (12 items), “Profession” (10 items) and “Scholarship” (11 items). Moreover, for the practitioner in a leader/mentor/supervisor/instructor role, there are an additional 11 items (4 General/7 Professional). These results suggest that the community perceives a much wider range of behaviors by mathematicians to be subject to ethical practice standards than had been previously included in professional organization codes. The results provide evidence against the argument that mathematics practitioners engaged in “pure” or “theoretical” work have minimal, small, or no ethical obligations. (shrink)

This study aims to investigate the influence of self-awareness on students’ ethical compliance, examine the impact of self-integrity on students’ ethical compliance, explore the effect of self-regulation on students’ ethical compliance, and analyze the influence of ethics education on students’ ethical compliance. Additionally, the research investigates whether ethics education taught in schools or universities has a greater impact compared to an individual’s personality on students’ ethical compliance. The population in this study comprises students in Indonesia. Data collection involves distributing questionnaires (...) through Google Forms, allowing one month for questionnaire completion. The study employs a significance level of 5% to examine the influence of independent variables on the dependent variable. The research findings demonstrate that self-awareness, self-integrity, self-regulation, and ethics education have significant influences on students’ ethical compliance. Furthermore, the study reveals that ethics education does not have a higher impact on students’ ethical compliance compared to the individual’s personality. Therefore, it is crucial to ensure that students possess good self-awareness, high levels of self-integrity, and self-regulation, and understand the ethics education they receive, as this will help enhance students’ ethics compliance. (shrink)

How do ethics show up in the everyday behaviors and conversations of researchers in a scientific laboratory? How does the microcosmic culture of the laboratory shape researchers’ understandings of scientific ethics? We, an interdisciplinary team representing anthropology, computer science, and rhetorical studies, investigated these questions in two university STEM labs. Similar to previous work mapping out the epistemic cultures, we sought to understand the ethical cultures of these research groups. We observed their lab meetings for several months and conducted interviews (...) with members of the research laboratories. Ultimately, we recognized two distinct ethical cultures within the two laboratories: one focused on the relationship between science and social justice, and the other focused on clean data and accuracy as an ethical issue. These two distinct ethical cultures were discernable through ethnography, close reading of laboratory members’ language, as well as broad-scale topic modeling. Our project complements previous studies of ethics in science that have focused on codes of ethics or student curricula as ways in which scientists develop an understanding of scientific ethics. Our project demonstrates that everyday interactions between the members of scientific research labs additionally shape, at a decidedly local level, how scientists understand and ultimately approach ethical decision-making in the scientific research process. (shrink)

Despite the popularity of teams in universities and modern organizations, they are often held back by dishonest actions, social loafing being one of them. Social loafers hide in the crowd and contribute less to the pooled effort of a team, which leads to an unfair division of work. While previous studies have mostly delved into the factors related to the task or the group in an attempt to explain social loafing, this study will instead focus on individual factors. Accordingly, the (...) aim is to investigate the determinants of social loafing attitudes, namely moral meaningfulness and mindfulness in a university setting. We further examine the relationship between attitudes and intentions and introduce the moderating role of motivation in the attitude–intention link. The findings from a sample of 319 business students reveal that both mindfulness and moral meaningfulness are negatively related to loafing attitudes, while attitudes positively predict social loafing intentions. In addition, we find that extrinsic motivation strengthens the relationship between social loafing attitudes and intentions. (shrink)

This article examines the global and worsening problem of research misconduct as it relates to bio-medico-legal education. While research misconduct has serious legal implications, few adequate legal remedies exist to deal with it. With respect to teaching, research ethics education should be mandatory for biomedical students and physicians. Although teaching alone will not prevent misconduct, it promotes integrity, accountability, and responsibility in research. Policies and law enforcement should send a clear message that researchers should adhere to the highest standards of (...) ethics in research. It is vital that researchers and physicians understand basic aspects of law and the legal system in order to develop understanding of the medico-legal issues not just in the legal context, but with a sound grounding in ethics, social and theoretical contexts so that they can practice good medicine. Routine and holistic research ethics education across the curriculum for medical students and resident physicians, and continuing medical education for practicing doctors, are probably the best ways to accomplish this goal. (shrink)