Ethics and Professional Role to the Society: A Proposal to Promote Ethical Attitudes in Engineering Students

Abstract

In the last decades, considerations regarding the role of engineers in their decision-making process have highlighted the importance of dealing with ethics in the teaching-learning process. Consequently, questions about how to design pedagogical strategies to promote an ethical and moral attitude and behavior in engineering students have emerged in a context where engineers must present the financial and ethical consequences of their projects' decisions. With this context in mind, this paper presents a brief review of the literature about ethics in engineering education. In particular, we want to describe some challenges that have been identified such as the frequent disconnection between ethics and engineering practice, the absence of positive measurable changes in students' ethical attitudes, the unsystematic implementation of ethics in engineering curricula, the low familiarity with the topic, among others. In addition, we intend to establish an “ought to” mode of engineering curricula related to ethics, considering some educational frameworks for curricular design such as CDIO (conceive, design, implement, operate) or international accreditation quality standards like ABET. Both frameworks make explicit reference to the promotion of ethics, social responsibility, equity and diversity, professional behavior, and making informed judgments in engineering decisions. These challenges introduce the proposal of a pedagogical strategy to promote ethical attitudes in engineering students in a School of Engineering in South America. This strategy is based on the developmental approach of moral conscience and the reflections on students' values and projects' implications related to engineering decisions and actions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts. It involves several landmarks: a systematic chart to approach ethics issues throughout the curriculum, in particular, in classes with a high practical component through projects, voluntary workshops to explore and identify students' values, exploratory tests to identify students' approaches to ethical dilemmas (with their correspondence reflections), among others. An interdisciplinary team of lecturers from different academic backgrounds in ethics, philosophy, and engineering designed the proposal. This strategy has been implemented, and some preliminary results with their corresponding reflections are also presented.