Reimagining Engineering Ethics: From Ethics Education to Character Education

Designing a Future Worth Wanting: Applying Virtue Ethics to HCI

“…Virtue ethics has formed the philosophical grounding for classroom activities in design fiction [18], data science [125], and system analysis [38]. In a broader contribution, Pierrakos et al argue that ethics education for engineers should move from an emphasis on rule-following to one of moral character, i.e., virtue [112].…”

ETHICS-2021 Special Session 7: Integrating virtue ethics into STEM courses: ETHICS-2021 Session, Sunday October 31, 2021, 3:00 AM-4:30 PM ET

“…A recent review on engineering ethics education found that current practices lead to shortcomings in emerging professionals (not just engineers) such as the rigid interpretation of ethics and in considering the broader societal impacts of their decisionmaking [8]. We have implemented a modular approach to engineering ethics, infusing character education comprehensively into our curricula.…”

What Can We Learn from Character Education? A Literature Review of Four Prominent Virtues in Engineering Education

“…Since virtues and skills are similarly cultivated through habituation and practice, a character education approach could benefit from the current interventions used to teach these skills while also helping students ensure that their particular capacities are 1) ordered to morally good ends, 2) reflect morally good motivations, 3) properly evaluate and address potential conflicts among values, and 4) are interconnected with and reinforced by other relevant virtues. Future studies integrating character education into undergraduate engineering education could help to further advance character education as a promising approach that could not only address the gap in professional skills such as teamwork, problem solving, and cultural awareness, but also improve engineers' technical decision-making and transform ethical decision-making in ways that move beyond rule-based approaches to compliance [16]. When engineers exercise intellectual, moral, civic, and performance virtues consistently and reliably towards morally good ends, they would not only be good, but do good in the world.…”

“…This paper explores this question by considering the relationship between personal and professional skills and engineering practice through the lens of virtue or character education [16]. The approach is further supported by recent research concluding that engineering professionals feel ill-prepared for engineering practice and the ethical issues they face in the workplace, and that engineering students lack growth in ethical decision-making as it relates to professional practice [17].…”