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Motivation is an important predictor of ethical awareness; however, it is not easy to assess. The goal of our study is to examine the relationship between motivation and ethical awareness in engineering students. We focus on two personality measures: person-thing orientation and spheres of control and test their association with ethical awareness using engineering scenarios that present ethical dilemmas. We predict that engineering students who score higher on the personality dimension of personthing orientation will display more ethical awareness than those who score lower. We also predict that students with a higher level of personal control will also display more ethical awareness. Two groups of students were involved in the study. Group 1 was formed by fifty-three first-year engineering students from University in the United States and Group 2 was represented by sixty-four sophomore engineering students in Engineering School in Spain. Students worked individually on case studies that presenting ethical dilemmas; they were asked to write short essays describing how they would respond to each situation. Then the essays were analyzed using an ethical reasoning and a global awareness rubric. Results revealed that 1) the context/nature of the students’ responses to the case study varied greatly, 2) personality traits and global and ethical perspective, all correlate to students’ ethical decisions as measured by their responses to the case studies scores, 3) there is an alignment between the SOC and the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI) dimensions that merits further exploration. 

Engineering education in the early 21st century is being transformed in many ways to meet the technological challenges of the future. In particular, the role of the humanities and social science in engineering coursework is under new scrutiny, as educators attempt to strengthen students’ proficiencies in aspects of the profession including interpersonal and intercultural skills, assessment of broader impacts of technical work, and especially ethics. These developments are often framed as responses to the demands of employers and institutions, who view these ‘soft’ skills as increasingly relevant to the work life of technical professionals. In this concept paper, we wish to pursue a somewhat different line of thought: We will examine arguments from the philosophy of science and technology, and from the social sciences, about the value of teaching engineers (as well as other technical professionals) to think through humanistic, social, and cultural lenses. We will review a range of perspectives supporting educational reform along these lines, with a particular focus on work in the recent pragmatic tradition (including Sellars, Mitcham, and others). Having established a range of theoretical defenses for educational reform along these lines in engineering fields, we will then consider the distinctions among them and how these insights might be applied most effectively in engineering curricula. We will conclude by reviewing available evidence for the practical utility of such interventions. We hope, by situating current reforms more firmly within a principled framework of ideas, to provide deeper support for positive change in the education of future engineers.