Pedagogical strategy to promote ethics and profesional responsability in engineering curricula

Resumen

During several decades, engineering was considered a morally and ethically neutral profession. Therefore, it was assumed that reflections about ethics and moral were not necessary. Consequently, questions have been outlined to include ethics in engineering curricula. These questions have been developed slowly in the last decades with the imperative need of designing an ethical framework to inform technical decisions that engineers make in project management. Associated with this issue, some curricular guidance have been found. The first one is based on the educational framework for curricular design named CDIO (conceive, design, implement, operate). CDIO initiative establishes that in the curriculum should be explicit, the promotion of ethics, social responsibility, integrity, professional behavior, staying current on the world of engineering, a commitment to work embracing equity, diversity, and teamwork.

The second guidance refers to the field of accreditation board – ABET. ABET declares that students are expected to know and be able to do some knowledge, skills, and behaviors associated to their progress in the program. In particular, an expected student outcome is related to the ability for recognizing ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering context and make informed judgments considering global, economic, environmental, and societal backgrounds.

Previous studies guide the “ought to” mode curricula related to ethics. Literature has acknowledged several challenges to carry out that mode: unsystematic implementation of ethics, the low weight given to this subject in the curriculum, the low familiarity with the theoretical knowledge in ethics, instructors’ difficulties to structure a comprehensive, theoretical and practical framework, among others.

Considering this background, the School of Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ) has made curricular reflections for designing a pedagogical strategy focused on ethics and social responsibility. This strategy involves several milestones, such as: shared reflections between the faculty of Engineering and the Center of Teological Formation to design educational activities, a systematic “roadmap” to approach ethics issues in the program, the strengthening of ethics reflections in mandatory disciplinary courses, the inclusion of voluntary workshops to explore and identify values among students, the promotion of ethics and social and professional responsibilities in designing engineering projects, and the proposal of quantitative and qualitative measures to reflect about students’ progress in the field of moral and ethics.

In this context, the paper introduces some literature considerations about ethics in engineering education. Then, it presents the conceptual and methodological framework that underlies the pedagogical strategy. After that, the designed strategy is described. Finally, some reflections about the implementation and future work are discussed.