Ethical Awareness and Engineering Identity for Effective Engineering Education

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Topics in Professional Identify Formation

Abstract

Considering the significance and impact of engineering practices on society, engineering ethics should be highlighted as a fundamental facet of engineering disciplines. Engineering ethics, including professional responsibilities, should be taught in professional engineering education. Although both engineering identity and engineering ethics are studied separately, there is little research on how they are related. As such, this study investigates the relationship between undergraduate students’ ethical awareness and engineering identity. Participants were engineering students from an R1 university in the Northeast U.S. Bivariate correlations showed that ethical awareness was positively correlated with engineering interest, engineering recognition, and engineering performance/competence, which are the three constructs of engineering identity. Further, the results of linear regressions showed that engineering recognition and ethnicity predicted ethical awareness.

Author

• Mihee Park, Penn State University