Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

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in the context of engineering we do not have integration of the two fields. For example, to
say the decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger is an example of professional
engineering wrongdoing requires only that we point to Robert Lund’s motivation for
giving the launch approval being a manager’s motivation rather than an engineer’s. This
shows at the very least that safety was not paramount in his decision, a violation of nearly
every code of ethics ratified by professional engineering societies. But while this might
help identify who is blameworthy, it does not elucidate the philosophical apparatus
making it an ethically important violation, although it certainly is ethically important. A
complete integration might, for example, also explain the special moral obligation an
engineer has by virtue of being an informed and consenting party to the social contract
that defines engineering as a profession. It would give reasons for why Lund’s decision to
act as a manager rather than as an engineer was morally wrong, given its context in
engineering and Lund’s existing moral obligations as a professional engineer.
Research Questions
The purpose of this study is to assess the current state of the field of engineering ethics
and to provide a sense of the state of the art. To accomplish this, our project’s central
research question is the following: how are contemporary writers articulating the concept
of engineering ethics? We phrase this question deliberately so it does not seek or expect a
singular definition. Rather, our aim is to explore the plurality of uses people have made of
engineering ethics. For example, we want to see what writers focus on once they decide
that what they are doing is engineering ethics.
The value of a meta-analysis such as this, where a disparate field is collected and analyzed
in one place is at least twofold: first educators have the resources of an entire field at their
disposal, helping choose the appropriate materials for their course curricula; second,
understanding the current scope of the field will help researchers design measurements
and studies by showing what materials are available and how they differ from one
another.
The exploration of this question is important to engineering education as our findings will
provide a valuable framework for future researchers and educators looking to understand
the field of engineering ethics at a glance.
Methodology
Our analysis was guided by the landmark books in the field (Harris, Pritchard, Rabins,
2005; Fleddermann, 2008; Whitbeck, 1998; Martin & Schinzinger, 2004) as well as other
common but less frequently cited books (Gunn & Vesilind, 2003). For journal articles, we
were grateful to be able to make use of the very thorough collection of relevant essays by
the philosopher Davis (2005). In this work Davis has already undertaken much of the
labor involved in investigating, collecting, categorizing, and contextualizing what seem to
be, in his opinion, the most important articles in the field up to about 2001. For the most
recent decade we relied on traditional database search methods using relevant search
terms, including but not limited to “ethics,” “engineering,” “morals,” “morality,”
“professional,” “responsibility,” etc. We applied these terms to common engineering and
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011