Office of Academic Affairs, Colorado School of Mines, Hill Hall 206A, Golden, CO, 80401, USA.
Division of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science, Colorado School of Mines, Stratton Hall 306, 1005 14th Street, Golden, CO, 80401, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2020 Aug;26(4):2235-2254. doi: 10.1007/s11948-020-00216-2. Epub 2020 Apr 16.
Engineering programs in the United States have been experimenting with diverse pedagogical approaches to educate future professional engineers. However, a crucial dimension of ethics education that focuses on the values, personal commitments, and meaning of engineers has been missing in many of these pedagogical approaches. We argue that a value-based approach to professional ethics education is critically needed in engineering education, because such an approach is indispensable for cultivating self-reflective and socially engaged engineers. This paper starts by briefly comparing two prevalent approaches to ethics education in science and engineering: professional (teaching professional ethical standards, including codes of ethics) and philosophical (teaching ethical theories and their applications in professional settings). While we acknowledge that both approaches help meet certain ethics education objectives, we also argue that neither of these is sufficient to personally engage students in authentic moral learning. We make the case that it is important to connect ethics education to the heart, which is extensively driven by values, and present a value-based approach to professional ethics education. We provide some classroom practices that cultivate a safe, diverse, and engaging learning environment. Finally, we discuss the implications of a value-based approach to professional ethics education for curriculum design and pedagogical practice, including opportunities and challenges for engineering faculty eager to incorporate value-based inquiry into their classrooms.
美国的工程学课程一直在尝试各种教学方法，以培养未来的专业工程师。然而，在许多此类教学方法中，都缺失了一个关键的道德教育维度，即关注工程师的价值观、个人承诺和意义。我们认为，工程学教育迫切需要一种基于价值观的职业道德教育方法，因为这种方法对于培养具有自我反思和社会参与意识的工程师是不可或缺的。本文首先简要比较了科学和工程学中两种流行的道德教育方法：专业方法（教授专业道德标准，包括道德准则）和哲学方法（教授伦理理论及其在专业环境中的应用）。虽然我们承认这两种方法都有助于实现某些道德教育目标，但我们也认为，这两种方法都不足以让学生真正参与到道德学习中。我们认为，将道德教育与价值观驱动的内心联系起来非常重要，并提出了一种基于价值观的职业道德教育方法。我们提供了一些课堂实践，以培养安全、多样和引人入胜的学习环境。最后，我们讨论了基于价值观的职业道德教育方法对课程设计和教学实践的影响，包括渴望将基于价值观的探究纳入课堂的工程学教师所面临的机遇和挑战。
