IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015 - 58

process as particularly challenging - it requires that a
formula be applied to a set of facts in order to yield the
correct answer. It is a familiar part of the design process
for which students are trained beginning from year one
in Engineering Fundamentals.
Virtue-based ethics receives increasing attention in
engineering ethics education literature. Aristotelian virtue
ethics holds that the right action is that which a virtuous
person would do under the circumstances. Hursthouse
writes that virtue as a character trait is "a well-entrenched
or settled state of a person - a certain sort of way they
are, through and through, all the way down - which
involves a disposition of a very complex sort" [12].
Many scholars contend that virtue ethics offers great
promise for developing the "emotional engagement"
with ethics in engineering students. Harris argues
against "preventative ethics" - negative rules and disaster case studies - and for a "virtues ethics" in which
students create a "professional virtue portrait of the
good engineer" [13]. Stovall relies on Aristotelian phronesis and argues for a virtue of "self-awareness." He
writes that the "virtuous professional is the successful
professional" [14]. Pritchard [15] also argues against an
over-emphasis on wrongdoing and disasters, and shifts
the focus to questions of character of the "responsible"
engineer, recommending that students study examples of exemplary engineering practice [16]. Frey offers
an engineering ethics pedagogy grounded in moral
psychology wherein students study the competencies
needed to be ethical and "practice moral expertise" in
the classroom [17]. Virtue ethics is used in professional
ethics in addition to engineering, including medicine,
law, and business. The Jubilee Centre's website includes
many resources on virtue ethics education. [18]
The method nearly universally employed to teach
students how to use ethical theory is the case study.
Case studies - real or fictitious - are plentiful: the space
shuttle Challenger and Columbia disasters, the Hyatt
Regency skywalk collapse, the Bhopal chemical spill,
and the made-for-the-classroom depictions of multiple
ethical dilemmas in films such as Henry's Daughters
[19]. The case study method offers variety in the classroom, including class or small group discussions, role
play, debates, and essay responses.
In 2000, Herkert described the state of engineering
ethics education in the U.S.A., including the utilization
of case studies and codes of ethics [20]. Bucciarelli, writing in 2008, strongly criticizes this traditional
approach because it treats engineering practice as
"solitary, instrumental, mono-paradigmatic, materialistic, value-neutral, hard, certain and calculative" rather
than as a profession where engineers must be prepared
to address "the social, the organizational - even the
political - complexities of practice" [21]. Pine's 2012

article described innovations in ethics instruction that
are being introduced at a handful of universities but,
commendable as these efforts are, the pedagogical
approaches are predominantly traditional [1].
With the abundance of literature on alternative engineering ethics pedagogy, why doesn't actual engineering
ethics pedagogy change? Herkert concludes that the
most notable challenge in undergraduate engineering
education is the failure of engineering faculty to accept
responsibility for teaching ethics [20]. If we expect engineering ethics pedagogy to change, then we must make
those changes meaningful to the people who will implement them in the classroom. Before we can emotionally
engage our students in ethics, we must first emotionally
engage the faculty who are teaching ethics. Although it
is outside the scope of this paper, one possible benefit
of having faculty use a phenomenological approach to
teaching engineering ethics is that it may also increase
their engagement.

Phenomenology as a Pedagogical Method
Most proponents of alternative engineering ethics
instruction aim to have students grasp the essence of
being an ethical engineer. They expect that this experience will make students care about ethics in a way that
traditional ethics instruction does not. For example,
virtue ethicists ask students to identify the virtues of a
good engineer [13], [15]. Bucciarelli argues that students
need to understand the complex world of the engineer
beyond the technical aspects of design work [21]. Lynch
and Kline contend that engineering students need to
experience ethics in the "real world" rather than studying
abstract notions of codes and moral theories [22]. Phenomenology - the revealing and description of essences
of phenomena - can inform a pedagogical method that
helps students discover and experience what it is to be
an ethical engineer.
Phenomenology is particularly useful to study professional experience because "it tries to place a researcher
in the perspective of the research participants in order to
understand their experience and feelings, thus unveiling
what it means, from their point of view, to be in the situation within the experience" of that professional person
[23]. Phenomenology is a philosophy that studies essences [24], [25]. As a research method, phenomenology
seeks to discover and describe the essences of human
experience in the real, everyday, lived world. By describing the essences of experiences, we aren't seeking their
scientific, theoretical, or causal explanations. Rather, phenomenology describes an experience and interprets it to
express a general understanding about its essence - what
is that experience about, what is its meaning [26], [27].
Phenomenology as a pedagogical method for engineering ethics education is not untried or unreported.

IEEE TEchnology and SocIETy MagazInE

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june 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2015