Title
A qualitative study exploring students' engineering ethical reflections and their use in instrument validation
Abstract
The development of ethical awareness and ethical reasoning is a critical part of engineering education. Appropriate assessments are needed to determine if the educational interventions are effective in developing these skills. Although there are measures to assess general moral reasoning (e.g., DIT2), they do not take into consideration the peculiarities of handling ethical situations in engineering rather than ethical situations in general. In addition, because most undergraduates learn to apply ethical reasoning to engineering through design courses that are taught in teams, it is important to understand the team ethical climate. To address this need, our research team is developing instruments to assess both individual moral reasoning and team ethical climate in an engineering context. As part of the validation efforts, we have conducted individual interviews and team observations to triangulate data from other sources and aid in data interpretation. In this work-in-progress research paper we present an overview of the instruments and our qualitative study design including our interview protocol and analysis approach. At the FIE conference, we will present initial findings from the analyses and discuss how these results are being used to validate and/or modify both the individual engineering ethical reasoning and team climate instruments being developed.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1109/FIE.2013.6685098
FIE
Keywords
Field
DocType
educational courses,engineering education,ethical aspects,design courses,engineering ethical reasoning,ethical awareness development,general moral reasoning assessment,instrument validation,interview protocol,qualitative study design,student engineering ethical reflections,team climate instruments,team ethical climate,assessment,engineering ethics,qualitative study
Psychological intervention,Moral reasoning,Sociology,Engineering ethics,Data interpretation,Engineering education,Knowledge management,Ethical reasoning,Qualitative research,Management science
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0190-5848
2
0.91
References 
Authors
0
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Zoltowski, C.B.1187.11
patrice m buzzanell221.93
Oakes, W.C.320.91
Kenny, M.W.420.91