2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Ethical Reasoning, Moral Intuitions, and Foreign Language in Global Engineering Education [Global Engineering Ethics Education]

Presented at The Global and Cultural Dimensions of Engineering Ethics Education

Ethics has been widely recognized as essential to effective engineering, highlighting the importance of ethics education to engineering curricula. However, developing and delivering effective engineering ethics education is difficult, given the increasingly global environments of contemporary engineering. In contemporary engineering, people from different places and background are studying and working together as never before. National and cultural backgrounds can affect understandings of appropriate conduct within engineering, as well as conceptions of right and wrong in general. Further, while much of the research on engineering ethics education in the US has tended to focus on ethical reasoning and knowledge as learning outcomes, it is unclear whether ethical reasoning or knowledge result in moral judgments or behaviors, and whether ethical reasoning is the same across different national and cultural groups. In addition to national and cultural backgrounds, research has found that foreign language affects ethical reasoning. For example, people are more likely to make sacrificial decisions in a foreign than a native language.

To improve ethics instruction for global engineering education, a study is being conducted exploring the development of ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students in the US, Netherlands, and China. This paper reports partial, preliminary results from that study, regarding the natures of and relations between ethical reasoning and moral intuitions among engineering students in the Netherlands and China, and how English as a foreign language affects this reasoning and these intuitions. To do so, engineering students in the Netherlands and China (n = 51) completed measures of ethical reasoning (the Engineering and Science Issues Test – ESIT) and moral intuitions (the Moral Foundations Questionnaire – MFQ) in Dutch and English, and Chinese and English, respectively. Descriptive statistics and statistical hypothesis testing will be carried out. Country and language will be treated as input variables, while responses on the ESIT and MFQ will be treated as output variables.

Authors

Dr. Rockwell Franklin Clancy III http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7797-7835 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

Rockwell Clancy conducts research at the intersection of technology ethics, moral psychology, and Chinese philosophy. He explores how culture and education affect moral judgments, the causes of unethical behaviors, and what can be done to ensure more ethical behaviors regarding technology. Rockwell is a Research Scientist in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Before moving to Virginia, he was a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the Colorado School of Mines. Rockwell holds a PhD from Purdue University, MA from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, and BA from Fordham University.
Dr. Qin Zhu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6673-1901 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]

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.
Dr. Scott Streiner University of Pittsburgh [biography]

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 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE)
Dr. Andrea Gammon http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4972-7254 Delft University of Technology [biography]

Andrea Gammon is Assistant Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology at TU Delft.

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