2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress study aims to qualitatively examine undergraduate students’ understanding of ethical dilemmas in aerospace engineering. Macroethics is particularly relevant within the aerospace industry as engineers are often asked to grapple with multi-faceted issues such as sustainable aviation, space colonization, or the military industrial complex. Macroethical education, the teaching of collective social responsibility within the engineering profession and societal decisions about technology, is traditionally left out of undergraduate engineering curricula. This lack of macroethics material leaves students underprepared to address the broader impacts of their discipline on society. Including macroethical content in the classroom helps novice engineers better understand the real implications of their work on humanity. Previous literature has explored how specific pedagogical interventions impact students’ decision-making, but few studies delve into undergraduate students’ awareness and perceptions of the issues themselves. Thus, it is essential to examine how students’ perceptions of macroethical dilemmas are evolving in order for instructors to effectively meet the needs of their students.

This study addresses the need to better understand student awareness of macroethical issues by extending upon previous research to qualitatively analyze responses from an iteration of a macroethical perceptions survey (n = 81) administered to undergraduate aerospace engineers at a large, Midwestern, predominantly white, research-intensive, public university. Our prior work has been used to develop and iterate upon a mixed-methods survey that seeks to understand students’ perceptions of ethical issues within the aerospace discipline. In the most recent version of our survey instrument, thirty-one Likert-scale questions asked about students’ feelings towards the current state of aerospace engineering and their ideal state of the aerospace field. Within this survey, eight Likert-scale prompts are followed by open-ended questions asking students to explain their answers in-depth. For instance, if students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘It is important to me to use my career as an aerospace engineer to make a positive difference in the world.’, a follow-up item asked students to explain what positive differences they would like to make in the world.

Student responses were analyzed using a combination of a deductive and inductive thematic analyses. Researchers first applied an a priori coding scheme onto responses that was initially developed using constructivist grounded theory, then used inductive analysis to account for new themes that naturally emerged within the data. The analysis delved deeper into students’ moral engagement towards ethical issues, their perceptions of who is affected by these dilemmas, and how they have seen these dilemmas addressed in both academic and professional settings. Preliminary results from the study identified that students have a wide spectrum of awareness of relevant issues and express varying levels of acceptance about the state of aerospace engineering.While some students exhibited signs of inattentiveness, or limited ability to consider viewpoints beyond their own, others demonstrated abilities to see multiple perspectives and critically analyze systems of power that influence how macroethical issues are addressed. Similarly, students also demonstrated varying degrees of acceptance, some demonstrating signs of apathy or moral disengagement regarding the field of aerospace engineering, others indicating signs of conflict, or a heightened state of stress about opposing ideals and values, and a final group of students indicating a desire to challenge or reform the existing culture of the discipline. These emergent themes will be used to inform teaching practices concerning engineering ethics education, refine future iterations of macroethics lesson content and survey instruments, and further incentivize the integration of macroethical content throughout aerospace engineering curricula.