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This work-in-progress paper presents the development of a survey designed to understand undergraduate aerospace engineering students’ views on macroethics in the field. Macroethics describes the real world ethical implications of engineering technology and the collective social responsibility of the aerospace engineering profession. As macroethics education is currently lacking in most undergraduate aerospace curricula in the United States, we are developing a survey intended to measure students’ current perceptions, knowledge, and beliefs about macroethics in the field. Insight into our students’ current beliefs and perceptions is imperative to develop new curricula and more generally alter the culture and direction of the aerospace engineering field from striving for apoliticalization to embracing the sociotechnical. A mixed-methods survey was taken by 158 undergraduate aerospace engineering students at two large, research-intensive universities in the United States. This paper presents confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses of Likert-scale data to further the development of the survey. The survey items were initially designed to address two proposed research questions: RQ1) To what degree are students aware of the importance of macroethical issues in the field of aerospace engineering?, RQ2) Do aerospace engineering students feel that their undergraduate education is preparing them to address macroethical issues? While confirmatory factor analysis does not confirm these two survey constructs for which the survey items were designed, an exploratory factor analysis results in five factors, each highlighting a different aspect of students’ perceptions of macroethical aerospace engineering education: 1) The criticality of the relationship between aerospace engineering and society, 2) The ease or difficulty of being an ethical aerospace engineer, 3) Technical determinism and aerospace career pathways, 4) Macroethics discussions within aerospace coursework, and 5) The ability of faculty to facilitate conversations on the macroethics of aerospace. These five factors provide a new basis upon which we will generate additional survey items in the future. Through this process, we will develop a survey that can effectively measure students’ beliefs and experiences in regards to the macroethical implications of the field of aerospace engineering.
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What Role do Civil Engineering Students See for their Profession in the COVID-19 Response?
Engineering education typically focuses on technical knowledge rather than ethical development. When ethics are incorporated into curriculum, the focus is usually on microethics concerning issues that arise in particular contexts and interactions between individuals, rather than macroethics that address broad societal concerns. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to assess macroethical understanding because unjust social, economic, and environmental systems have been brought to the forefront of the response. In this study, we aim to understand students’ awareness of unjust systems and the ethical responsibilities of engineers. At the beginning of the pandemic in the United States, in April 2020, we deployed a survey to undergraduate engineering students at two universities. We asked students to explain what they perceived to be the role of the engineering profession in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This paper focuses on the responses of undergraduate civil engineering students, totaling a sample size of 84 students across two universities. We used qualitative analyses (deductive and inductive coding) to categorize responses between “macroethics is present” and “macroethics is not present”, and we used quantitative analysis to test the two categories with sociodemographic factors for association. We show that there are statistically significant differences across student responses given certain sociodemographic factors. Responses from women focused more on macroethics as compared to responses from men. There was also a difference in responses between the universities surveyed, showing that institutional differences may impact students’ macroethical development. Potential implications from this study include recommendations on curricular content and identifying which student demographic groups would benefit most from intentional macroethical content in coursework. Additionally, increasing diversity and representation of women in engineering may impact the engineering industry’s focus on macroethics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1926172
- PAR ID:
- 10488380
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Virtual Conference
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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This work-in-progress paper presents the development of a survey designed to understand undergraduate aerospace engineering students’ views on macroethics in the field. Macroethics describes the real world ethical implications of engineering technology and the collective social responsibility of the aerospace engineering profession. As macroethics education is currently lacking in most undergraduate aerospace curricula in the United States, we are developing a survey intended to measure students’ current perceptions, knowledge, and beliefs about macroethics in the field. Insight into our students’ current beliefs and perceptions is imperative to develop new curricula and more generally alter the culture and direction of the aerospace engineering field from striving for apoliticalization to embracing the sociotechnical. A mixed-methods survey was taken by 158 undergraduate aerospace engineering students at two large, research-intensive universities in the United States. This paper presents confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses of Likert-scale data to further the development of the survey. The survey items were initially designed to address two proposed research questions: RQ1. To what degree are students aware of the importance of macroethical issues in the field of aerospace engineering? RQ2. Do aerospace engineering students feel that their undergraduate education is preparing them to address macroethical issues? While confirmatory factor analysis does not confirm these two survey constructs for which the survey items were designed, an exploratory factor analysis results in five factors, each highlighting a different aspect of students’ perceptions of macroethical aerospace engineering education: 1. The criticality of the relationship between aerospace engineering and society 2. The ease or difficulty of being an ethical aerospace engineer 3. Technical determinism and aerospace career pathways 4. Macroethics discussions within aerospace coursework 5. The ability of faculty to facilitate conversations on the macroethics of aerospace These five factors provide a new basis upon which we will generate additional survey items in the future. Through this process, we will develop a survey that can effectively measure students’ beliefs and experiences in regards to the macroethical implications of the field of aerospace engineering.more » « less
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