Ethics and civic education in the curriculum of Portuguese power engineering courses

Abstract

The ethical and civic students' education in engineering courses has been recognized as fundamental, increasing the attention being paid to this issue by several entities, authors and thinkers. As a result, multiple Portuguese higher education institutions have been introducing this issue in the curricula of engineering courses. Are various the authors who hold that higher education is only complete when the student, in addition to acquiring the technical know-how of their area of knowledge, knows how to use them wisely, which requires to be provided with values and skills of ethical and civic analysis. Taking into account the role of engineering in society, and the broad field of its intervention that interferes with multiple dimensions of human existence and sustainability, it is imperative to consider the consequences of their actions (positive, negative and even dangerous). Therefore, the various professional organizations in this area have come to recognize the need and importance of ethical, deontological and civic education of engineering students. The study presented here aimed to know how the Portuguese higher education institutions, incorporate in the power engineering curriculum the ethical and civic education of their students. The study covers all public institutions of higher education that have engineering courses, representing 28 institutions (13 universities and 15 polytechnics). The used methodology was the official curricula collection and analysis in the various engineering courses, with the objective of identifying the type of ethical, moral, deontological or civic students' education. From the conclusions should be noted that only 11.54% of the power engineering courses include in their curriculum some curricular unit with objectives within the ethical, moral, deontological or civic education. This value is well below the national average of engineering courses taught in Portuguese higher education institutions, of which 29.3% of engineering courses include this educational component in their curricula. All of power engineering courses that include ethics or civic education in it curriculum belong to universities and are integrated masters. However, even with respect to this subset (university and integrated masters), the percentage of all engineering courses that include ethics or civic education in it curriculum is 57% and of 50% in the courses (integrated master's degree) in power engineering courses. It is also worth noting that in the polytechnic institutions with engineering courses, 10% of all the courses include ethics or civic education. However, in the case of power engineering courses, none include this type of training. The data presented indicate that only one of the power engineering courses attaches great importance to ethics and civic education of their students, giving up about 83 hours of learning in this training component (it was considered that 1ECTS is equivalent to about 30 work hours).