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Background: Studies of changes in engineering students’ perceptions of ethics and social responsibility over time have often resulted in mixed results or shown only small longitudinal shifts. Comparisons across different studies have been difficult due to the diverse frameworks that have been used for measurement and analysis in research on engineering ethics and have revealed major gaps between the measurement tools and instruments available to assess engineering ethics and the complexity of ethical and social responsibility constructs. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to understand how engineering students’ views of ethics and social responsibility change over the four years of their undergraduate degrees and to explore the use of reflexive principlism as an organizing framework for analyzing these changes. Design/Method: We used qualitative interviews of engineering students to explore multiple facets of their understanding of ethics and social responsibility. We interviewed 33 students in their first and fourth years of their undergraduate studies. We then inductively analyzed the pairs of interviews, using the reflexive principlism framework to formulate our findings. Results: We found that engineering students in their fourth year of studies were better able to engage in balancing across multiple ethical principles and specification of said ethical principles than they could as first year students. They most frequently referenced nonmaleficence and, to a lesser degree, beneficence as relevant ethical principles at both time points, and were much less likely to reference justice and autonomy. Conclusions: This work shows the potential of using reflexive principlism as an analytical framework to illuminate the nuanced ways that engineering students’ views of ethics and social responsibility change and develop over time. Our findings suggest reflexive principlism may also be useful as a pedagogical approach to better equip students to specify and balance all four principles when ethical situations arise. 

Prior research on engineering students’ understandings of ethics and social responsibility has produced mixed and sometimes conflicting results. Seeking greater clarity in this area of investigation, we conducted an exploratory, longitudinal study at four universities in the United States to better understand how engineering undergraduate students perceive ethics and social responsibility and how those perceptions change over time. Undergraduate engineering students at four U.S. universities were surveyed three times: during their 1st (Fall 2015), 5th (Fall 2017), and 8th semesters (Spring 2019). The students who completed all three surveys (n = 226) comprise the sample that was analyzed in this paper for changes in their scores on five instruments: Fundamentals of Engineering/Situational Judgment, Moral Disengagement, ABET Engineering Work and Practice Considerations, Macroethics, and Political and Social Involvement Scale. We found that students modestly increased their knowledge of ethics and ability to apply that knowledge in situations calling for them to exercise judgment. In addition, they consistently indicated that health and safety considerations in engineering were of highest importance. They also showed steady levels of social consciousness over time, in contrast to other studies which detected a culture of increasing disengagement in engineering students throughout the four years of their undergraduate studies.

 

Scholars have argued that engineering practice should be understood in its societal context, including the political contexts in which engineers perform. However, very few research studies have systematically explored the political and moral backgrounds of engineering professionals, who would be the main agents in the political contexts. This paper reports our exploratory study of the political ideologies and moral foundations of engineers in the United States. Based on survey responses from 515 engineers, we conducted generalized ordinal logistic regression analyses and multiple linear regression analyses to examine how engineers’ political ideologies are associated with their moral foundations and how engineers’ political ideologies and moral foundations vary across their employment sectors, organizational positions, and demographic attributes. We found that engineers in the manufacturing sector are more politically conservative than engineers in the computer/electronics/IT sector. Additionally, engineers in higher positions in their organizations are more politically conservative than engineers in lower positions, and female engineers are more politically liberal than male engineers. We also found that engineers’ endorsement of the five moral foundations differs by sector and demographic attributes. Moreover, engineers’ moral foundations substantially explain engineers’ political ideologies, consistent with previous studies using the Moral Foundations Theory. 

This paper uses the critical incident technique to analyze how early career engineers experience ethics in the workplace. Our results build off a previously developed framework that categorizes critical incidents related to professional engineering ethics, but we expand the framework to address its gaps. Though there was significant overlap between our findings and the existing framework in the types of critical incidents reported by participants, in some cases the severity of a negative ethical experience was not captured by existing categories, especially when describing sexual harassment in the workplace. Many incidents also required multiple categories to accurately describe them as opposed to a single overarching descriptor. Additionally, we observed a connection between personal morality and professional ethics that was present in some critical incidents. Our observations suggest that similar types of critical incidents related to ethics may often be experienced by engineers, but more work needs to be done to expand the classification of these situations and better understand how engineers develop ethics-related competencies, especially early in their careers and in a workplace context. 

This paper uses the critical incident technique to analyze how early career engineers experience ethics in the workplace. Our results build off a previously developed framework that categorizes critical incidents related to professional engineering ethics, but we expand the framework to address its gaps. Though there was significant overlap between our findings and the existing framework in the types of critical incidents reported by participants, in some cases the severity of a negative ethical experience was not captured by existing categories, especially when describing sexual harassment in the workplace. Many incidents also required multiple categories to accurately describe them as opposed to a single overarching descriptor. Additionally, we observed a connection between personal morality and professional ethics that was present in some critical incidents. Our observations suggest that similar types of critical incidents related to ethics may often be experienced by engineers, but more work needs to be done to expand the classification of these situations and better understand how engineers develop ethics-related competencies, especially early in their careers and in a workplace context. 

Engineers operate in an increasingly global environment, making it important that engineering students develop global engineering competency to prepare them for success in the workplace. To understand this learning, we need assessment approaches that go beyond traditional self‐report surveys. A previous study (Jesiek et al.,Journal of Engineering Education2020; 109(3):1–21) began this process by developing a situational judgment test (SJT) to assess global engineering competency based in the Chinese context and administering it to practicing engineers.

We built on this previous study by administering the SJT to engineering students to explore what prior experiences related to their SJT performance and how their SJT performance compared with practicing engineers' performance on the SJT.

Engineering students completed a survey including the SJT and related self‐report survey instruments. We collected data from three groups of students: those who had studied abroad in China; those who had studied abroad elsewhere; and those who had not studied abroad.

We found that students' SJT performance did not relate to their scores on the self‐report instruments, but did relate to their participation in study abroad programs. The students also performed better on the SJT when compared to the practicing engineers.

Our results highlight the need to use multiple forms of assessment for global engineering competence. Although building evidence for the validity of the Global Engineering Competency China SJT is an ongoing process, this data collection technique may provide new insights on global engineering competency compared to traditionally used assessments.

 

The realities of engineering practice remain opaque and constantly evolving, often leaving graduates underprepared for the workplace and employers dissatisfied with new employees. In this study we shed new empirical light on the lived working experiences of early career engineers in large manufacturing firms. We adopt boundary spanning as the primary framework for our research given growing recognition of its importance in the workplace and potential utility for conceptualizing engineering practice. We specifically address the research question: What kinds of boundary spanning do early career engineers experience in their daily work? Our study is based on interviews with 23 early career engineers analyzed using a thematic analysis approach to code for boundary spanning and other related themes. We then wrote third-person constructed narratives to holistically portray the day-to-day work of three participants. Our findings illustrate how engineers frequently encounter many different types of boundaries and perform specific boundary spanning activities. The narratives also illuminate early career progression, including evidence of increasing leadership responsibilities as engineers navigate evolving job role demands and organizational expectations. We conclude with directions for future research, and discuss how our findings speak to ongoing efforts to reimagine professional practice while improving engineering education and professional development.