Abstract
Online science and engineering ethics (SEE) education can support appropriate goals for SEE and the highly interactive pedagogy that attains those goals. Recent work in moral psychology suggests pedagogical goals for SEE education that are surprisingly similar to goals enunciated by several panels in SEE. Classroom-based interactive study of SEE cases is a suitable method to achieve these goals. Well-designed cases, with appropriate goals and structure can be easily adapted to courses that have online components. It is less clear that exclusively online methods can support the wide range of goals necessary to good moral pedagogy in SEE, though there seems no a priori reason to rule this out. Only careful, goal-based assessment of online case study SEE teaching can resolve this question.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1969) Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach to Socialization, in: Goslin, D. (ed) Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, Rand McNally, Chicago, pp. 347–480.
Rest, James R., Narváez, Darcia, Thoma, Stephen J., & Bebeau, Muriel J. (2000) A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach to Morality Research. Journal of Moral Education, 29(4): 381–396.
Blasi, A. (1980) Bridging Moral Cognition and Moral Action: A Critical Review of the Literature. Psychological Bulletin, 88(1): 1–45.
Colby, A. & Damon, W. (1992) Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment, Free Press, New York.
Haidt, J. (2001) The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Psychological Review. 108: 814–834.
Bebeau, M.J., & Thoma, S.J. (1999) Intermediate Concepts and the Connection to Moral Education. Educational Psychology Review, 11(4): 343–360.
Oliner, S.P., & Oliner, P.M. (1988) The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, Free Press, New York.
Johnson, Mark (1993) Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Pritchard, Michael S. (1998) Professional Responsibility: Focusing on the Exemplary, Science and Engineering Ethics, 4(2): 215–234.
Rest, James R. (1994) Background, Theory and Research, in: Rest, James. & Narváez, Darcia (eds) Moral Development in the Professions: Psychology and Applied Ethics. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ, pp. 1–26.
Seligman, M.E.P. (1994) What You Can Change and What You Can’t, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
Keefer M. & Ashley, K.D. (2001) Case-based Approaches to Professional Ethics: A Systematic Comparison of Students’ and ethicists’ Moral Reasoning. Journal of Moral Education 30: 377–398.
Johnson, Deborah G. (2001) Computer Ethics: 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, pp. 16–19.
Matthews, Gareth (1987) Concept Formation and Moral Development, in: James Russell (ed) Philosophical Perspectives on Developmental Psychology. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Werhane, Patricia H. (1999) Moral Imagination and Management Decision Making, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 100–107.
Lakoff, George & Johnson, Mark (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, New York.
Pinkus, Rosa Lynn B., Shuman, Larry J., Hummon, Norman P., & Wolfe, Harvey (1997) Engineering Ethics: Balancing Cost, Schedule, and Risk—Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Weston, Anthony (2001) A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 179–200.
May, Larry (1996) The Socially Responsive Self: Social Theory and Professional Ethics, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Callahan, D. (1980) Goals in the Teaching of Ethics, in: Callahan, D. & Bok, S. (eds) Teaching Ethics in Higher Education. Plenum, New York, pp. 61–74.
Huff, C.W. & Martin, C.D. (December, 1995) Computing Consequences: A Framework for Teaching Ethical Computing. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 38(12): 75–84.
Martin, C.D., Huff, C.W., Gotterbarn, D., & Miller, K. (1996) Implementing a Tenth Strand in the CS Curriculum: The Second Report from Project ImpactCS. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 39(12): 75–84.
Martin, C.D. & Weltz, E.Y. (August, 1998) From Awareness to Action: Integrating Ethics and Social Responsibility Across the Computer Science Curriculum. The third report from the ImpactCS Steering Committee. Retrieved July 2002 from: http://www.student.seas.gwu.edu/~impactcs/paper3/toc.html.
Ladd, John (1991) Bhopal: An Essay on Moral Responsibility and Civic Virtue. Journal of Social Philosophy 12(1): pp. 73–91.
May, Larry (1992) Sharing Responsibility, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Davis, Michael (1999) Ethics and the University, Routledge: London.
Herreid, C.F. (1998) Sorting Potatoes for Miss Bonner: Bringing Order to Case Study Methodology Through a Classification Scheme, in: Journal of College Science Teaching 27: 236–239.
Harris, Charles E., Pritchard, Michael S., & Rabins, Michael J. (1999) Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases, 2nd Edition, Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, Belmont, CA.
Epstein, R. (1996) The Case of the Killer Robot: Stories About the Professional, Ethical and Societal Dimensions of Computing, John Wiley, New York.
Kiesler, S. (ed) (1997) Culture of the Internet, Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
Gehringer, Edward F. (2001) Building an Ethics in Computing Website Using Peer Review. Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition: Session 1461.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Huff, C., Frey, W. Moral pedagogy and practical ethics. SCI ENG ETHICS 11, 389–408 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-005-0008-1
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-005-0008-1