Connecting to the Heart: Teaching Value-Based Professional Ethics.

Area of Science:

• Engineering Education
• Ethics in Science and Engineering

Background:

• Current engineering ethics education often lacks focus on engineers' personal values, commitments, and sense of meaning.
• Traditional approaches, including professional codes and philosophical theories, are insufficient for deep moral engagement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To advocate for a value-based approach in professional ethics education for engineers.
• To demonstrate how connecting ethics to personal values cultivates more self-reflective and socially responsible engineers.

Main Methods:

• Comparison of prevalent professional and philosophical ethics education approaches.
• Presentation of a value-based pedagogical framework for engineering ethics.
• Description of classroom practices promoting a safe, diverse, and engaging learning environment.

Main Results:

• A value-based approach is crucial for authentic moral learning in engineering students.
• This approach helps cultivate engineers who are both self-reflective and socially engaged.
• Classroom practices can effectively support value-based ethical inquiry.

Conclusions:

• Integrating value-based ethics education is vital for engineering programs.
• This approach requires thoughtful curriculum design and pedagogical adaptation by faculty.
• Opportunities and challenges exist for implementing value-based ethics in engineering classrooms.