Engineers' Moral Responsibility: A Confucian Perspective

Fictional Film in Engineering Ethics Education: With Miyazaki's The Wind Rises as Exemplar

This paper aims to call attention to the potential of using film in engineering ethics education, which has not been thoroughly discussed as a pedagogical method in this field. A review of current approaches to teaching engineering ethics reveals that there are both learning outcomes that need more attention as well as additional pedagogical methods that could be adopted. Scholarship on teaching with film indicates that film can produce ethical experiences that go beyond those produced by both conventional methods of teaching engineering ethics and more arts-based methods such as fiction, as well as connect ethics learning outcomes and issues to the lifeworld of a person. The paper further illustrates the potential of using Miyazaki Hayao's film The Wind Rises for highlighting a range of ethical issues pertaining to engineering. It also discusses the important role educators play in how film can be used effectively in the classroom. Synthesizing a range of sources from film theory to the use of film in business and medical education, the paper makes the case for using film in engineering ethics education and calls for more research on the use of this method.

Validating the Civic-Minded Graduate Scale in Engineering Education Using Mixed Methods

Civic-mindedness is a central aim of higher education, but strategies for assessing civic-mindedness in engineering education are limited. Thus, engineering educators must build on strategies employed across higher education while ensuring these strategies are transferable to the engineering context. This study continues ongoing validation work of the Civic-Minded Graduate Scale in engineering by using mixed methods to pursue multiple forms of validity evidence. We collected, analyzed, and triangulated findings from first-year engineering students using 419 survey responses and 11 semi-structured interviews. We integrated quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate how the five constructs of the Civic-Minded Graduate Scale represent engineering students’ civic-mindedness and manifest in engineering students’ perceptions of the engineering profession. We align our data with existing engineering education research, particularly in the domains of ethics, humanitarian engineering, and professional skills development. We close with implications for teaching and assessing civic-mindedness within and outside of engineering education.

Technological Enthusiasm: Morally Commendable or Reprehensible?

Technological enthusiasm (TE) is a value that can influence engineering, shape technologies and subsequently transform human lifestyles. Despite its significant role, up until now, there has been little research done on this value. The dominant idea is that this value is commendable. However, based on consequentialism, a recently proposed idea describes TE as neither morally commendable nor reprehensible. In this paper, three arguments are presented against this recent idea, and a new idea is introduced, which challenges not only commendation for TE but also neutrality of TE. Further, it is shown that a virtue ethics approach can be adopted to evaluate the moral role of TE. In the approach, TE can be considered a character trait or a virtue/vice. Then, three arguments are proposed to indicate that TE is not a virtue but a vice. This paper illustrates some advantages of virtue ethics in ethical evaluation of a problem in which consequentialism or utilitarianism is not effective.