title: The Roles of Implicit Understanding of Engineering Ethics in Student Teams' Discussion.
abstract: Following previous work that shows engineering students possess different levels of understanding of ethics-implicit and explicit-this study focuses on how students' implicit understanding of engineering ethics influences their team discussion process, in cases where there is significant divergence between their explicit and implicit understanding. We observed student teams during group discussions of the ethical issues involved in their engineering design projects. Through the micro-scale discourse analysis based on cognitive ethnography, we found two possible ways in which implicit understanding influenced the discussion. In one case, implicit understanding played the role of intuitive ethics-an intuitive judgment followed by reasoning. In the other case, implicit understanding played the role of ethical insight, emotionally guiding the direction of the discussion. In either case, however, implicit understanding did not have a strong influence, and the conclusion of the discussion reflected students' explicit understanding. Because students' implicit understanding represented broader social implication of engineering design in both cases, we suggest to take account of students' relevant implicit understanding in engineering education, to help students become more socially responsible engineers.
authors.affiliation: Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, JO31, Richardson, TX, 75080-3021, USA.
authors.forename: Eun Ah
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, JO31, Richardson, TX, 75080-3021, USA.
authors.forename: Magdalena
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grohman
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Gans
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tacca
authors.affiliation: Center for Values in Medicine, Science and Technology, The University of Texas at Dallas, 800 W. Campbell Road, JO31, Richardson, TX, 75080-3021, USA. mattbrown@utdallas.edu.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5361-5143
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D032882:Comprehension; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D004738:Engineering / Q000941:ethics*; D004995:Ethics, Professional; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D019545:Intuition; D007600:Judgment; D009014:Morals; D011340:Problem Solving; D012941:Social Responsibility; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D013850:Thinking
keywords: Cognitive ethnography; Distributed cognition; Engineering ethics; Ethical insight; Implicit understanding; Intuitive ethics; Situated cognition; Situated learning