Research Initiation: Expanding the Boundaries of Ethical Reasoning and Professional Responsibility in Engineering Education Through Critical Narrative

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach FL

Investigators

Abstract

Future employers, institutions of higher education, and accreditors like ABET expect undergraduate engineering graduates to possess critical thinking skills. Critical thinking requires engineering students to make informed technical decisions that include diverse stakeholders and complex solutions. To achieve growth in their critical thinking, engineering students should also learn about ethics and professional responsibility. As research shows, engineering students need opportunities to practice the emotional infrastructure that’s required for engagement with myriad issues related to complex real-world solutions. The basic and foundational tenets of engineering require a commitment to professional ideals that elevate public health, safety, and the welfare of communities, while also acknowledging the complex interactions between social, environmental, and economic factors. This research project will focus on engineering ethics and professional responsibility by investigating the use of critical narratives as a teaching and learning tool in the professional formation of engineers. Critical narratives are structured, placed-based stories, intended to foster connections between the audience as well as specific cultures and communities. This research supports stated goals of the NSF Professional Formation of Engineers (PFE) program by gathering empirical evidence related to engineering students’ critical thinking, ethics, and professional responsibility. Developing an understanding of how engineering students perceive the broader impacts of their chosen profession, especially as articulated through the lens of ethics and professional responsibility, is an important first step in addressing professional formation. The current model of engineering education, focused primarily on technical proficiency, leaves little room for the structured and integrated exploration of these broader impacts. Therefore, this project’s goal is to improve critical thinking in undergraduate engineering students through a new educational intervention aimed at enhancing ethics and professional responsibility in undergraduate engineering students. Evaluation of the intervention will be performed using experimental and control groups. Quantitative data will consist of engineering student responses to the Ethics and Professional Responsibility Assessment (EPRA) survey. Qualitative data will consist of engineering students’ written responses to critical narratives completed throughout their two-semester Senior Design sequence, including responses to publicly-available critical narratives and students’ final design reports. Researchers will code these written artifacts for evidence of critical thinking related to ethics and professional responsibility. This research will provide much-needed validation of a potentially transformative teaching method for undergraduate engineering education. By connecting the engineering curriculum more closely to the development of students’ values around ethics and professional responsibility, this project will lay the foundation for future engineering professionals to more effectively engage with complex problems. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.