Abstract
Ethics promotes collective respect, well-being, and development. Its values drive individual, social, and environmental conduct and apply to all human activities. Professional ethics or deontology refers to the moral obligations binding professionals to society in the work sphere. These moral obligations are fundamental in professions that, like engineering, are behind technological innovation, given its current daily and worldwide impact. As such, it is essential to train engineers for holistic problem-solving, that is, driven by ethical, sustainability, technical, and economic constraints. This chapter analyses engineering ethics and how it is addressed within the European Project Semester, an undergraduate one-semester international exchange program, focusing on this aspect of engineering education. European Project Semester relies on multicultural teamwork, project-based learning, ethics, and sustainability-oriented design to motivate and prepare global engineers committed to protecting and improving life on the planet.
TopIntroduction
Ethics, as an academic field, is a branch of practical philosophy. Ethics is so practical that it is omnipresent in our daily life. People make decisions, choices and act based on considerations that have an ethical dimension, regardless of whether they are aware of this fact. As engineering professionals, the ever-changing work environment brings new ethical challenges, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, but also in handling questions about the economy, health and safety, and risk management (Felländer, 2019). Students need to be prepared and trained to think critically, identify and handle ethical issues autonomously in everyday situations. This requires a “moral compass”, a basic idea of ethical conduct.
In 2017, the European Union (EU) Commission renewed its agenda for higher education which bears clear ethical expectations:
[…] the success of the European project depends on the EU’s capacity to build a better future for European citizens.
Effective education and training systems are a foundation of fair, open and democratic societies and of sustained growth and employment.
[…] higher education must play its part in facing up to Europe’s social and democratic challenges.
[…] academics and students have a crucial role to play in defending empirical facts and evidence and in communicating research results effectively and widely. (Publications Office of the European Union, 2021).
These democratic values are not by any means automatically addressed in ordinary engineering education. However, the European Project Semester (EPS) gives, as will be shown below, many opportunities to do so. This contribution aims to introduce the potential ethical challenges facing students of today and to show how these can be addressed during an EPS-semester.
The current chapter includes four additional sections: the second section addresses ethics in general and specifically professional ethics; the third section presents how EPS contributes to the adoption of ethical practices by the participants; the fourth section illustrates how this was achieved in specific EPS projects; and the last section draws the conclusions.
TopEthics And Professional Ethics
Ethics is a branch of philosophy dedicated to the study of morals or the human sense of right and wrong (Crane et al., 2019). It emerges from human interaction and, ultimately, expects individuals to treat others as they would like to be treated themselves. Professional ethics or deontology follows the same spirit but has a narrower scope since it applies to professional acts. This section will first give a brief overview of the concept of ethics, then discuss professional ethics, and lastly, provide examples of how ethics can be incorporated in an EPS-semester.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Sustainability-Driven Solutions: The design of solutions considering the economic, environmental, and social dimensions.
Ethical Awareness: The ability to identify and act based on moral or ethical issues.
Professional Ethics: The moral duties or rules that must be followed in the exercise of a profession.
Engineering Education: The training of future engineering professionals.
European Project Semester: A one-semester engineering learning framework supported by project-based learning, multicultural and multidisciplinary teamwork, ethics, deontological and sustainability-driven problem-solving.
Deontological Ethics: Duty-based professional ethics (see professional ethics below).