Ethics and the Development of Professional Identities of Engineering Students

Abstract

How do undergraduate students in engineering conceive of themselves as professionals? How can a course on engineering ethics affect the development of an undergraduate student's professional identity? In this project, students responded to questions about the characteristics and responsibilities of professional engineers. The results indicate that students learn about professionalism primarily from relatives and co-workers who are engineers, and rarely from technical engineering courses. Even before they study engineering ethics, students put honesty and integrity on par with technical competence as an essential characteristic of engineers. In the course, students benefit from cases of actual incidents and from classroom activities that encourage diverse perspectives on moral problems. By analyzing cases in groups and by hearing different perspectives, students build self-confidence in moral reasoning. By the end of the course, some students understand professional responsibility not only as liability for blame but in a capacious sense as stewardship for society.

A Longitudinal Study of Social and Ethical Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Preliminary Results

“…27 And in a related study, Loui used interview data to show how formal instructional interventions can help reinforce and expand student awareness of, and commitments to, social and ethical responsibility. 28 Clancy, Quinn, & Miller similarly used focus groups and surveys to assess their "case study laboratory" approach, finding significant improvements in students' awareness of ethical issues. 29 However, very different results emerged from Drake et al's comparison of two kinds of ethics instruction, namely a full semester ethics course and an engineering course that included an ethics module.…”

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: An Ethics Case Study in Environmental Engineering

“…Role-playing exercises have been used successfully throughout a variety of engineering ethics endeavors, including but not limited to case studies. [19][20][21] As described by Doorn and Kroesen 19 , role-playing exercises are particularly useful as they "broaden students' perspectives." Further, role-playing discussions allow students to drive the discourse; the leading professorate becomes a facilitator rather than a "preacher."…”

Disciplinary Influences on the Professional Identity of Civil Engineering Students: Starting the Conversation

“…This professional identity results from students' subjective application of the civil engineering disciplinary identity to their own personal identities. From this perspective, students are enculturated into the civil engineering profession during their academic, undergraduate experiences and begin to develop their professional identities as civil engineers [16][17][18][19] .…”

“…As students learn about the civil engineering profession, they transition from "ordinary [members] of society" [4] to members of a profession and learn how to "become" civil engineers [16][17][18][19] . In this context, learning is perceived as a site for professional identity formation in which students subjectively merge the identity of the discipline with their own personal identities during their undergraduate education experience [4,[18][19][20][21] . From this perspective, civil engineering education serves as the nexus that links students' individual identities to those of the profession.…”

“…Drawing from the work of Tonso [22] and Gee [23] , we define key identity concepts and review current research on professional identity formation in engineering contexts. Next, we emphasize two primary underlying concepts to guide the remainder of our discussion: 1) the learning process perceived as a means of identity development [4,18,22] ; and 2) the influences of the civil engineering profession on the environments in which this learning takes place. Upon linking professional identity formation and learning to the professionally-influenced education of civil engineering students, we review three key events that have greatly impacted the identity of the civil engineering profession: 1) the establishment of professional credentialing systems, 2) the development of the American Society for Civil Engineers Body of Knowledge, and 3) the creation of the ASCE Code of Ethics.…”