Title
Developing conceptual and methodological foundations for a cross-cultural, multi-institutional study of ethical reasoning and moral dispositions of engineering students
Author
Gammon, A.R. (TU Delft Ethics & Philosophy of Technology)
Zhu, Qin (Virginia Tech)
Streiner, Scott (University of Pittsburgh)
Clancy III, R.F. (TU Delft Ethics & Philosophy of Technology)
Thorpe, Ryan (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)
Date
2022
Abstract
This full research paper develops a framework for using comparative case studies to triangulate with quantitative survey data in engineering ethics education research.Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly globalized environments of contemporary engineering present challenges to effective engineering ethics training. An overarching goal of our team’s larger project is to examine the effects of culture and education on ethics training in undergraduate engineering students at universities in the United States, China, and the Netherlands to assess how this training impacts students’ ethical reasoning and moral dispositions, and how this differs cross-culturally. To gauge students’ moral dispositions and ethical reasoning skills and to measure any change in these, we administer the Moral Foundations Questionnaire and the Engineering & Science Issues Test to engineering students longitudinally over four years. Because the conditions related to engineering ethics education differ widely per participating institution, interpreting and analyzing survey quantitative data will require understanding the contextual conditions of education at each institution. In this paper we ask the question what and how can case study methods contribute to longitudinal and cross-cultural ethics educational research with large data sets? To answer it, we develop conceptual and methodological foundations for the design of comparative, multi-institutional case studies to contextualize, complement, and interpret quantitative and qualitative data on ethical reasoning and moral dispositions. We develop comparative case studies to supply missing contextual information for triangulation with quantitative and qualitative data and to provide a more complete picture of the engineering ethics educational contexts, strategies, and practices at each of the participating universities. In this project, case studies provide informational and contextual significance to the other sources of data our research produces, elucidating conditions required to understand and make sense of the results of the research. In the paper we introduce our research project, motivate the use of case studies in our research by reviewing literature on case studies and multi-method triangulation in educational research. We explain how specific cases will be designed, and by providing the first step of two cases, timelines of ethics interventions for two degree programs, demonstrate the informational and interpretive need for comparative case studies in triangulating with other data sources. By using multiple case design to compare universities’ approaches in this frame, our analysis can respond to particular institutional educational contexts and cultural and language factors, make cross-cultural comparisons, and offer recommendations about responsible and culturally responsive engineering ethics education.
Subject
engineering ethics education
mixed methods research
case study
multi-method triangulation
multiculturalism
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:765eeb0a-7421-4124-8ed1-b9ea15afcb57
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962559
Publisher
IEEE
Embargo date
2023-07-01
ISBN
9781665462440
Source
Proceedings of the 2022 Frontiers in Education Conference
Event
2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2022-10-08 → 2022-10-11, Uppsala, Sweden
Series
Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE, 1539-4565, 2022-October
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Part of collection
Institutional Repository
Document type
conference paper
Rights
© 2022 A.R. Gammon, Qin Zhu, Scott Streiner, R.F. Clancy III, Ryan Thorpe