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Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly globalized environments present challenges to effective engineering ethics training. This paper is part of a larger research project that aims 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. We are interested in how students’ curricular and extra-curricular (e.g., internships, service projects) experiences and training impact their ethical reasoning and moral dispositions, and how this differs cross-culturally. To understand this, we are conducting mixed methods research longitudinally over four years to engineering students at our participating universities to gauge their moral dispositions and ethical reasoning skills and to measure any change in these. This work-in-progress paper, however, is not about the direct outcomes of this research project. Rather, it critically examines our own practices and methods in doing this research. We begin the paper by briefly introducing the larger research project and motivating the use of comparative, multi-institutional case studies as necessary for contextualizing, complementing, and interpreting quantitative data on ethical reasoning and moral dispositions. Because the conditions related to engineering ethics education differ widely per participating institution for institutional (and also likely cultural) reasons, interpreting and analyzing quantitative survey data will require understanding contextual conditions of education at each institution. Comparative case studies can supply missing contextual information to provide a more complete picture of the engineering ethics educational contexts, strategies, and practices at each of the participating universities. However, in considering how to design and conduct these case studies, we realized we were operating under certain assumptions such as ethics in engineering as separate (and separable from) the “real,” or technical engineering curriculum. These assumptions have been widely problematized in engineering ethics education (Cech, 2014; Tormey et al. 2015; Polmear et al. 2019); they are assumptions that we in our teaching and research attempt to dispel. Our paper considers (and invites discussion on) the broader implications of methodological design in conducting cross-cultural multi-sited case studies in engineering ethics education research. It explores models for designing and conducting our case studies so as not to reproduce pernicious ideas about social and ethical issues in engineering as subsidiary “interventions” in the “actual,” (i.e., technical) curriculum. More generally we discuss how engineering ethics education research methods can be harnessed to overcome this established division.
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This content will become publicly available on June 10, 2026
Students Reasoning About Bias and Ethics When Designing Human Subjects Research Studies
Understanding bias and ethics in research is critical for both researchers and consumers of research. It facilitates sound decision-making, builds public trust in research, and ensures that research contributes positively to society. Authentic research opportunities can be critical for developing these skills, but are lacking in high school contexts. We designed and implemented MindHive, a curriculum and online platform for students to design and conduct online human behavior studies. Qualitative analysis of 98 student-generated research proposals and 21 individual interviews with students from across 6 high schools, identified various ways that students engaged with bias and ethical issues within their projects. Engaging in research about personally relevant questions and contexts may support students in shuttling between personal experiences and data, and taking on perspectives that help to reveal and address assumptions. Findings contribute to an understanding of how curriculum can meaningfully engage students in reasoning about research bias and ethics.
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- PAR ID:
- 10649856
- Editor(s):
- Rajala, Atti; Cortez, Arturo; Hofmann, Riikka; Jornet, Alfredo; Lotz-Sisitka, Heila; Markauskaite, Lina
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of the International Society for the Learning Sciences Annual Meeting 2025
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1025-1033
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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