How has engineering ethics addressed gender concerns to date? How have the ideas of feminist philosophers and feminist ethicists made their way into engineering ethics? What might an explicitly feminist engineering ethics look like? This paper reviews some major themes in feminist ethics and then considers three areas in which these themes have been taken up in engineering ethics to date. First, Caroline Whitbeck’s work in engineering ethics integrates considerations from her own earlier writings and those of other feminist philosophers, (...) but does not use the feminist label. Second, efforts to incorporate the Ethic of Care and principles of Social Justice into engineering have drawn on feminist scholarship and principles, but these commitments can be lost in translation to the broader engineering community. Third, the film Henry’s Daughters brings gender considerations into the mainstream of engineering ethics, but does not draw on feminist ethics per se; despite the best intentions in broaching a difficult subject, the film unfortunately does more harm than good when it comes to sexual harassment education. I seek not only to make the case that engineers should pay attention to feminist ethics and engineering ethicists make more use of feminist ethics traditions in the field, but also to provide some avenues for how to approach integrating feminist ethics in engineering. The literature review and analysis of the three examples point to future work for further developing what might be called feminist engineering ethics. (shrink)

Perhaps the most common reason science and engineering faculty give for not including “ethics” (that is, research ethics, engineering ethics, or some discussion of professional responsibility) in their technical classes is that “there is no room”. This article 1) describes a technique (“micro-insertion”) that introduces ethics (and related topics) into technical courses in small enough units not to push out technical material, 2) explains where this technique might fit into the larger undertaking of integrating ethics into the technical (scientific or (...) engineering) curriculum, and 3) concludes with some quantified evidence (collected over more than a decade) suggesting success. Integrating ethics into science and engineering courses is largely a matter of providing context for what is already being taught, context that also makes the material already being taught seem “more relevant”. (shrink)

This paper aims to review the empirical and theoretical research on engineering ethics education, by focusing on the challenges reported in the literature. The analysis is conducted at four levels of the engineering education system. First, the individual level is dedicated to findings about teaching practices reported by instructors. Second, the institutional level brings together findings about the implementation and presence of ethics within engineering programmes. Third, the level of policy situates findings about engineering ethics education in the context of (...) accreditation. Finally, there is the level of the culture of engineering education. The multi-level analysis allows us to address some of the limitations of higher education research which tends to focus on individual actors such as instructors or remains focused on the levels of policy and practice without examining the deeper levels of paradigm and purpose guiding them. Our approach links some of the challenges of engineering ethics education with wider debates about its guiding paradigms. The main contribution of the paper is to situate the analysis of the theoretical and empirical findings reported in the literature on engineering ethics education in the context of broader discussions about the purpose of engineering education and the aims of reform programmes. We conclude by putting forward a series of recommendations for a socio-technical oriented reform of engineering education for ethics. (shrink)

The use of case-based reasoning in teaching professional ethics has come of age. The fields of medicine, engineering, and business all have incorporated ethics case studies into leading textbooks and journal articles, as well as undergraduate and graduate professional ethics courses. The most recent guidelines from the National Institutes of Health recognize case studies and face-to-face discussion as best practices to be included in training programs for the Responsible Conduct of Research. While there is a general consensus that case studies (...) play a central role in the teaching of professional ethics, there is still much to be learned regarding how professionals learn ethics using case-based reasoning. Cases take many forms, and there are a variety of ways to write them and use them in teaching. This paper reports the results of a study designed to investigate one of the issues in teaching case-based ethics: the role of one’s professional knowledge in learning methods of moral reasoning. Using a novel assessment instrument, we compared case studies written and analyzed by three groups of students whom we classified as: Experts in a research domain in bioengineering. Novices in a research domain in bioengineering. The non-research group—students using an engineering domain in which they were interested but had no in-depth knowledge. This study demonstrates that a student’s level of understanding of a professional knowledge domain plays a significant role in learning moral reasoning skills. (shrink)

Ethical tasks faced by researchers in science and engineering as they engage in research include recognition of moral problems in their practice, finding solutions to those moral problems, judging moral actions and engaging in preventive ethics. Given these issues, appropriate pedagogical objectives for research ethics education include (1) teaching researchers to recognize moral issues in their research, (2) teaching researchers to solve practical moral problems in their research from the perspective of the moral agent, (3) teaching researchers how to make (...) moral judgments about actions, and (4) learning to engage in preventive ethics. If web-based research ethics education is intended to be adequate and sufficient for research ethics education, then it must meet those objectives. However there are reasons to be skeptical that it can. (shrink)

The effects of head injury, even mild traumatic brain injury, are wide-ranging and profound. Persons with adult-onset head injury offer feminist philosophers important perspectives for philosophical methodology and philosophical research concerning personal identity, mind-body theories, and ethics. The needs of persons with head injury require the expansion of typical teaching strategies, and such adaptations appear beneficial to both disabled and non-disabled students.

Judgment is central to engineering, medicine, the sciences and many other practical activities. For example, one who otherwise knows what engineers know but lacks engineering judgment may be an expert of sorts, a handy resource much like a reference book or database, but cannot be a competent engineer. Though often overlooked or at least passed over in silence, the central place of judgment in engineering, the sciences, and the like should be obvious once pointed out. It is important here because (...) it helps to explain where ethics fits into these disciplines. There is no good engineering, no good science, and so on without good judgment and no good judgment in these disciplines without ethics. Doing even a minimally decent job of teaching one of these disciplines necessarily includes teaching its ethics; teaching the ethics is teaching the discipline (or at least a large part of it). (shrink)

We argue that the practice of engineering does not exist outside the domain of societal interests. That is, the practice of engineering has an inherent (and unavoidable) impact on society. Engineering is based upon that relationship with society (inter alia). An engineer’s conduct (as captured in professional codes of conduct) toward other engineers, toward employers, toward clients, and toward the public is an essential part of the life of a professional engineer, yet the education process and professional societies pay inadequate (...) attention to the area. If one adopts Skooglund’s definition of professional ethicsI (how we agree to relate to one another), then the codes of professional conduct lay out a road map for professional relationships. As professionals, engineers need to internalize their codes and to realize that they have a personal stake in the application of codes as well as the process of developing the codes. Yet, most engineers view professional codes as static statements developed by “others” with little (or no) input from the individual engineer. Complicating the problem, questions of professionalism (such as ethics) are frequently viewed as topics outside the normal realm of engineering analysis and design. In reality, professional responsibility is an integral part of the engineering process. (shrink)

Web-based access to engaging instructional materials for SEE instruction represents an increasingly viable and attractive opportunity for educators. This paper will review research findings that demonstrate important differences in more experienced and novice ethical responses to engaging online materials, including authentic cases, codes, and commentaries. Results demonstrate that experienced ethical thinkers are more likely than novices to appeal to middle level principles that identify professional role-specific obligations (RSO); to make greater use of professional knowledge in order to recognize moral issues (...) and relevant facts; and to employ more ‘contextually sensitive’ reasoning strategies when crafting resolutions to moral problems — e.g., identify alternative moral issues, assess the moral implications of actions, and provide alternative practical resolutions to conflicts. These findings suggest that when effectively integrated into SEE courses, authentic instructional materials have the potential to effectively challenge students and enhance student learning. however, there is evidence that the uses and benefits of these materials are not well understood. In the second part of this paper, five research-based instructional principles will be identified and discussed that can help SEE instructors better understand how to effectively integrate these materials into their courses. (shrink)

As a result of in-house discussions stimulated by previous Gonzaga engineering ethics conferences, Coffman Engineers began the implementation of what is to be a company-wide ethics training program. While preparing a curriculum aimed at consulting engineers, we found very little guidance as to how to proceed with most available literature being oriented towards the academic environment. We consulted a number of resources that address the teaching of engineering ethics in higher education, but questioned their applicability for the Consulting Engineering environment. (...) This lack of guidance led us to informal research into the ethical knowledge and attitudes of both consulting engineers and engineering students. Some of our findings were unexpected, and suggest that a simpler approach to teaching ethics to working professionals might be preferred to that typically promoted in higher education. (shrink)

Discovering obligations that are ascribed to them by others is potentially an important element in the development of the moral imagination of engineers. Moral imagination cannot reasonably be developed by contemplating oneself and one’s task alone: there must be some element of discovering the expectations of people one could put at risk. In practice it may be impossible to meet ascribed obligations if they are completely general and allow no exceptions — for example if they demand an unlimited duty to (...) avoid harm. But they can still serve to modify engineers’ prior ethics, for example by limiting a purely utilitarian approach to deciding who should bear risk and how much risk they should bear. Ascribed obligations can also give engineers insight into the public reaction to risks that arise from engineered systems, and the consequent expectations that the public have about how much protection is desirable and where the responsibility for this protection lies. This article analyses the case for taking ascribed obligations seriously, and reviews some of the obligations that have been ascribed in the aftermath of recent engineering failures. It also proposes ways in which ascribed obligations could be used in engineers’ moral development. (shrink)

In 1998, a lead researcher at a Midwestern university submitted as his own a document that had 64 instances of strings of 10 or more words that were identical to a consultant’s masters thesis and replicated a data chart, all of whose 16 entries were identical to three and four significant figures. He was fired because his actions were wrong. Curiously, he was completely unable to see that his actions were wrong. This phenomenon is discussed in light of recent advances (...) in neuroscience and used to argue for a change in the standard way engineering ethics is taught. I argue that engineering ethics is better taught in the form of a design course in order to maximize “somatic” learning. (shrink)

Certain attributes are particularly desirable for public educational websites, and websites for ethics education in particular. Among the most important of these attributes is wide accessibility through adherence to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML code. Adherence to this standard produces webpages that can be rendered by a full range of web browsers, including Braille and speech browsers. Although almost no academic websites, including ethics websites, and even fewer commercial websites are accessible by W3C standards, as illustrated (...) by the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science 〈http://onlineethics.org〉, even websites created on limited budgets and with an undergraduate student staff can fulfill these standards. Other desirable attributes, such as provision of annotation for all links and the use of annotated links to give the user alternate ways of ordering and organizing content, are important for making full use of the educational possibilities of hypermedia for websites. (shrink)

This article reports on a method of group mentoring to strengthen responsible research conduct. A key feature of this approach is joint exploration of the issues by trainees and their faculty research supervisors. These interactions not only help participants learn about current ethical norms for research practice, but also draw on the accumulated experience of faculty and staff about practical problems of research conduct, and help to make faculty more articulate about responsible research conduct and so better able to guide (...) their trainees. By working with departments or laboratories as a whole the method facilitates the formulation of specific norms appropriate to particular research situations and to strengthen the group’s ability to support appropriate behavior and deal with new issues as they arise. It also gives students more ways to ask questions about research practice and to benefit from the experience of all members of their department or group as well as their own research supervisors. The method is well tested and has been well received by a wide variety of departments and research groups. It provides the means for a constructive and enjoyable response to the Public Health Service’s (PHS) new Policy on Instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) that requires education in the responsible conduct of research for all those funded by PHS funds, including faculty and staff as well as trainees. (shrink)

Formalizing shared ethical standards is an activity of scientific societies designed to achieve a collective goal of promoting ethical conduct. A scientist who is faced with the choice of becoming a “whistleblower” by exposing misconduct does so in the context of these ethical standards. Examination of ethics policies of scientific societies which are members of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP) shows a breadth of purpose and scope in these policies. Among the CSSP member societies, some ethics policies chiefly (...) present the ethical culture of the community in an educational context and do not have enforcement procedures. Other policies are more comprehensive and include standards for certification, procedures for addressing ethical issues, and established sanctions. Of the 36 member societies of CSSP that have developed a code or adopted a code of another professional society, 18 specifically identified a responsibility to expose ethical misconduct, demonstrating an acknowledgment of the possible critical role of the whistleblower in addressing ethical issues. Scientific societies may revise their ethics codes based upon experience gained in addressing cases of ethical misconduct. In most cases, the action of a whistleblower is the initial step in addressing an ethics violation; the whistleblower may either be in the position of an observer or a victim, such as in the case of someone who discovers that his or her own work has been plagiarized. The ethics committee of a scientific society is one of several possible outlets through which the whistleblower can voice a complaint or concern. Ethical violations can include falsification, fabrication, plagiarism and other authorship disputes, conflict of interest and other serious violations. Commonly, some of these violations may involve publication in the scientific literature. Thus addressing ethical issues may be intertwined with a scientific society’s role in the dissemination of new scientific results. For a journal published by a scientific society, the editor can refer at some point to the ethics committee of the society. Whereas, in the case of a journal published by a commercial publisher, the editor may be without direct support of the associated scientific community in handling the case. The association of a journal with a scientific society may thus direct a whistleblower towards addressing the issue within the scientific community rather than involving the press or talking to colleagues who may gossip. A formal procedure for handling ethics cases may also discourage false accusers. Another advantage of handling complaints through ethics committees is that decisions to contact home institutions or funding agencies can be made by the ethics committee and are not the responsibility of the whistleblower or the editor of the journal. The general assessment is that the establishment of ethics policies, especially policies covering publication in society journals, will promote a culture supportive of whistleblowers and discouraging to false accusers. (shrink)

Engineering ethics is usually focused on engineers’ ethics, engineers acting as individuals. Certainly, these professionals play a central role in the matter, but engineers are not a singularity inside engineering ; they exist and operate as a part of a complex network of mutual relationships between many other people, organizations and groups. When engineering ethics and engineers’ ethics are taken as one and the same thing the paradigm of the ethical engineer which prevails is that of the heroic engineer, a (...) certain model of the ideal engineer: someone both quite individualistic and strong enough to deal with all the moral challenges that could arise. We argue that this is not the best approach, at least today in our interrelated world. We have achieved a high degree of independence from nature by means of technology. In exchange for this autonomy we have become increasingly tied up with very complex systems to which we constantly delegate new tasks and powers. Concerns about safety keep growing everywhere due to the fact that now we have a sensitive awareness of the huge amount of power we are both consuming and deploying, thus, new forms of dialogue and consensus have to be incorporated at different levels, in different forums and at different times. Within these democratic channels of participation not just the needs and interests, but also the responsibilities and mutual commitments of all parties should be taken into account. (shrink)

In this paper we present the authors’ experience of teaching a course in Ethics for Engineers, which has been delivered four times in three different universities in Spain and Chile. We begin by presenting the material context of the course, and especially the intellectual background of the participating students, in terms of their previous understanding of philosophy in general, and of ethics in particular. Next we set out the objectives of the course and the main topics addressed, as well as (...) the methodology and teaching resources employed to have students achieve a genuine philosophical reflection on the ethical aspects of the profession, starting from their own mindset as engineers. Finally we offer some results based on opinion surveys of the students, as well as a more personal assessment by the authors, recapitulating the most significant achievements of the course and indicating its underlying Socratic structure. (shrink)

: The effects of head injury, even mild traumatic brain injury, are wide-ranging and profound. Persons with adult-onset head injury offer feminist philosophers important perspectives for philosophical methodology and philosophical research concerning personal identity, mind-body theories, and ethics. The needs of persons with head injury require the expansion of typical teaching strategies, and such adaptations appear beneficial to both disabled and non-disabled students.

A self-perceived lack of training in ethical theories and related pedagogy has kept many engineering faculty members from teaching data ethics, an important aspect of engineering research that has become more salient in recent years. This paper describes the development of a module, which includes concepts, cases, policies, and best practices, to support the teaching of ethical data practice. Based on a user-oriented design approach and a moral literacy framework, the module was designed to be used in different courses and (...) co-curricular activities for students of varying levels of competence to improve their ability to identify and analyze ethical problems associated with the handling of research data. This work seeks to encourage ethical reflection on researchers’ data practice through the idea of an “ecology of data,” which highlights the co-production of data by multiple, interconnected, and heterogeneous actors. This paper also presents online and in-class evidence about the impact and limitations of the module, which is now available for interested researchers and instructors to browse and use. (shrink)