Board 328: Investigating the Effects of Culture and Education on Ethical Reasoning and Dispositions of Engineering Students: Initial Results and Lessons Learned

Qin Zhu; Scott Streiner; Rockwell Franklin Clancy; Ryan Thorpe

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--42924
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/42924
Download Count: 114

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Paper Authors

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Qin Zhu Virginia Tech orcid.org/0000-0002-6673-1901

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Dr. Zhu is Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Science, Technology & Society and the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech. Dr. Zhu is also an Affiliate Researcher at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Zhu is Editor for International Perspectives at the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, Associate Editor for Engineering Studies, and Executive Committee Member of the International Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum. Dr. Zhu's research interests include global and international engineering education, engineering ethics, engineering cultures, and ethics and policy of computing technologies and robotics.

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Scott Streiner University of Pittsburgh

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Scott Streiner is an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department, teaches in the First-Year Engineering Program and works in the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) in the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Scott has received funding through NSF to conduct research on the impact of game-based learning on the development of first-year students’ ethical reasoning, as well as research on the development of culturally responsive ethics education in global contexts. He is an active member of the Kern Engineering Entrepreneurship Network (KEEN), the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and serves on the First-Year Engineering Education (FYEE) Conference Steering Committee.

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Rockwell Franklin Clancy III Colorado School of Mines orcid.org/0000-0002-7797-7835

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Rockwell Clancy is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines and Guest Researcher in the Department of Values, Technology, and Innovation, at Delft University of Technology. Before Mines he was a Lecturer at Delft, and previously an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute and Research Fellow in the Institute of Social Cognition and Decision-making, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of moral psychology, engineering and technology ethics, and Chinese philosophy.

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Ryan Thorpe

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Abstract

Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly global environments of contemporary engineering present new challenges to effective engineering ethics training. With the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program, a collaboration of investigators from Virginia Tech, University of Pittsburgh, Delft University of Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are conducting a mixed-methods project examining the effects of culture and educational experiences on ethics training in undergraduate engineering students. To gauge students’ ethical reasoning skills and moral dispositions and to measure any change in these, we administer the Engineering & Science Issues Test (ESIT) and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to engineering students longitudinally over four years. Additionally, we survey students perceived public welfare beliefs (based on the work of Erin Cech on moral disengagement), examples of (un-)ethical behaviors in engineering, and personal ethical values. Now in its second year, we have conducted our initial baseline study on first-year engineering students’ ethical perceptions across three cultures (United States, Netherlands, and China), three languages, and seven institutions.

Because the conditions related to engineering ethics education differ widely per participating in institution, interpreting and analyzing survey quantitative data will require understanding the contextual conditions of education at each institution. To this end, we are employing a university-level, multi-case study design to map the landscape of engineering ethics education from a cross-cultural perspective, triangulating the findings from the quantitative instruments (ESIT and MFQ), qualitative methods (student and faculty interviews), with contextual information about programs of study. This part of the project will help us (1) gain a culturally responsive interpretation of the results obtained from the ESIT and MFQ; (2) examine whether and how the two instruments work in assessing students’ ethical development in the cross-cultural context; and (3) compare how different (extra-)curricular and institutional interventions affect students’ ethical development in different cultures.

This paper offers an overview of the progress to date of our NSF funded research project, synthesizing the preliminary findings from year 1 of the baseline study, providing some initial analysis of the results from years 1 and 2, and discussing the development of the conceptual and methodological foundations for the case study analysis.

Citation
Format

Zhu, Q., & Streiner, S., & Clancy, R. F., & Thorpe, R. (2023, June), Board 328: Investigating the Effects of Culture and Education on Ethical Reasoning and Dispositions of Engineering Students: Initial Results and Lessons Learned Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42924

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly global environments of contemporary engineering present new challenges to effective engineering ethics training. With the support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program, a collaboration of investigators from Virginia Tech, University of Pittsburgh, Delft University of Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University are conducting a mixed-methods project examining the effects of culture and educational experiences on ethics training in undergraduate engineering students. To gauge students’ ethical reasoning skills and moral dispositions and to measure any change in these, we administer the Engineering &amp;amp; Science Issues Test (ESIT) and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to engineering students longitudinally over four years. Additionally, we survey students perceived public welfare beliefs (based on the work of Erin Cech on moral disengagement), examples of (un-)ethical behaviors in engineering, and personal ethical values. Now in its second year, we have conducted our initial baseline study on first-year engineering students’ ethical perceptions across three cultures (United States, Netherlands, and China), three languages, and seven institutions. 

Because the conditions related to engineering ethics education differ widely per participating in institution, interpreting and analyzing survey quantitative data will require understanding the contextual conditions of education at each institution. To this end, we are employing a university-level, multi-case study design to map the landscape of engineering ethics education from a cross-cultural perspective, triangulating the findings from the quantitative instruments (ESIT and MFQ), qualitative methods (student and faculty interviews), with contextual information about programs of study. This part of the project will help us (1) gain a culturally responsive interpretation of the results obtained from the ESIT and MFQ; (2) examine whether and how the two instruments work in assessing students’ ethical development in the cross-cultural context; and (3) compare how different (extra-)curricular and institutional interventions affect students’ ethical development in different cultures. 

This paper offers an overview of the progress to date of our NSF funded research project, synthesizing the preliminary findings from year 1 of the baseline study, providing some initial  analysis of the results from years 1 and 2, and discussing the development of the conceptual and methodological foundations for the case study analysis.
AU  - Qin Zhu
AU  - Scott Streiner
AU  - Rockwell Franklin Clancy III
AU  - Ryan Thorpe
CY  - Baltimore , Maryland
DA  - 2023/06/25
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 328: Investigating the Effects of Culture and Education on Ethical Reasoning and Dispositions of Engineering Students: Initial Results and Lessons Learned
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/42924
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--42924
ER  -