title: A Pragmatic Approach to Ethical Decision-Making in Engineering Practice: Characteristics, Evaluation Criteria, and Implications for Instruction and Assessment.
abstract: This paper begins by reviewing dominant themes in current teaching of professional ethics in engineering education. In contrast to more traditional approaches that simulate ethical practice by using ethical theories to reason through micro-level ethical dilemmas, this paper proposes a pragmatic approach to ethics that places more emphasis on the practical plausibility of ethical decision-making. In addition to the quality of ethical justification, the value of a moral action also depends on its effectiveness in solving an ethical dilemma, cultivating healthy working relationships, negotiating existing organizational cultures, and achieving contextual plausibility in everyday professional practice. This paper uses a cross-cultural ethics scenario to further elaborate how a pragmatic approach can help us rethink ethical reasoning, as well as ethics instruction and assessment. This paper is expected to be of interest to educators eager to improve the ability of engineers and other professional students to effectively and appropriately deal with the kinds of everyday ethical issues they will likely face in their careers.
authors.affiliation: Ethics Across Campus Program, Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines, 322 Stratton Hall, 1005 14th Street, Golden, CO, 80401, USA. qzhu@mines.edu.
authors.forename: Qin
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6673-1901
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Engineering Education, Purdue University, 1313 Armstrong Hall, 701 West Stadium Avenue, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2045, USA.
authors.forename: Brent K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Jesiek
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D004738:Engineering / Q000193:education* / Q000941:ethics* / Q000592:standards; D004995:Ethics, Professional / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans
keywords: Engineering ethics; Ethics assessment; Ethics education; Pragmatic ethics; Scenario-based education