Collaborative Research: Foundations of Social and Ethical Responsibility Among Undergraduate Engineering Students: Comparing Across Time, Institutions, and Interventions

合作研究：工程本科生社会和道德责任的基础：跨时间、机构和干预措施的比较

• 批准号: 1449490
• 负责人: Thomas Seager
• 金额: $ 16万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-05-15 至 2020-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1449490&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Foundations; Social; Ethical

Recognizing the critical roles played by technical professionals in serving the public and addressing grandchallenges, many formal courses and programs have been created to promote professional responsibilityand ethical integrity among engineering graduates. Other interventions (e.g., service learning programs)have been developed to more broadly challenge engineering and technology students to see themselves asengaged citizens and community members. Yet there has been a lack of research on foundationalunderstandings of social and ethical responsibility among such students, including how theseunderstandings change over time and through participation in specific types of learning experiences.Additional empirical evidence is needed to guide ongoing efforts to cultivate enhanced social and ethicalresponsibility among future engineers, including by identifying and promoting specific interventions thathave the biggest positive impacts on students.The proposed study responds to these gaps in the existing scholarship by asking the following researchquestions: 1) What do engineering students perceive as responsible (and irresponsible) professionalconduct, and what do they perceive as socially just (and unjust) technical practices?, and 2) How dofoundational measures and understandings of social and ethical responsibility change during a four-yearengineering degree program, both in general and in relation to specific kinds of learning experiences? Toinvestigate these questions, a longitudinal mixed-method study design will collect and analyzequantitative and qualitative data from undergraduate engineering students at four universities. To improvetransferability of results, these schools will represent a variety of institution types. Each collaboratingschool also has large numbers of students in programs of interest, e.g., service-learning and intensifiedethics instruction. Further, the study will give priority to investigating differences in perceptions andexperiences among underrepresented student populations.

认识到技术专业人员在服务公众和应对重大挑战方面所发挥的关键作用，许多正式的课程和项目已经创建，以促进工程毕业生的职业责任和道德操守。其他干预措施（例如服务学习计划）的制定是为了更广泛地挑战工程和技术学生，让他们将自己视为积极参与的公民和社区成员。然而，缺乏对此类学生对社会和道德责任的基本理解的研究，包括这些理解如何随着时间的推移以及通过参与特定类型的学习经历而发生变化。需要更多的经验证据来指导不断努力培养增强的社会和道德责任未来的工程师，包括通过确定和促进对学生产生最大积极影响的具体干预措施。拟议的研究通过提出以下研究问题来回应现有奖学金中的这些差距：1）工程专业的学生认为什么是负责任的（和不负责任的）专业行为，以及他们认为什么是社会公正（和不公正）的技术实践？以及2）在四年制工程学位课程期间，基本措施和对社会和道德责任的理解如何变化，无论是一般性的还是与特定相关的什么样的学习经历？为了研究这些问题，纵向混合方法研究设计将收集和分析四所大学工程本科生的定量和定性数据。为了提高成果的可转移性，这些学校将代表各种机构类型。每所合作学校也有大量学生参与感兴趣的课程，例如服务学习和强化道德指导。此外，该研究将优先调查代表性不足的学生群体的看法和经历的差异。