The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the Situated Ethical Deliberation and Action Framework (SEDAF), compared to conventional reasoning-based and value-based frameworks, on students' ability to take moral action when faced with professional ethical challenges, in the context of an undergraduate engineering ethics course. The selected USOAR Research Assistant will support in activities related to the qualitative and quantitative data analysis and the review of literature in the domains of ethics and character development education and practice to support assessing the study's practical implications.
Over the past two decades Giving Voice to Values (GVV) has become an influential shift over the normative-based model of ethical leadership pedagogy, lauded for its grounding on individual self-understanding and on the planning, scripting, and rehearsal to enable actions consistent with the learner’s values in response to ethical dilemmas. GVV is used as a foundational element in UVA's STS 2600 Engineering Ethics course.
The SEDAF, developed by this project's primary investigator, expands the GVV pedagogy in two ways: (a) it offers a more specific repertoire of steps for ethical deliberation and action, and (b) it contextualizes those steps through a contextual cartography of nested interpersonal and organizational settings where deliberation can happen.
The question driving this study is How, if at all, do students’ moral potency scores differ after participating in an [3-hour] Engineering Ethics workshop using a situated deliberative ethical action framework, compared to workshops using conventional normative-reasoning and Giving Voice to Values pedagogies?
This study will assist in validating an enhanced methodology that, if proven to be effective, can be used in the future to make engineering ethics education both more empowering and more responsive to the shifting social and organizational dynamics of the high technology sector.
* Good time management skills
* Interest in ethics frameworks and ethics education
* Interest in the social impacts of technology
* Interest in basic research design
* Strong teamwork skills
* Capacity to carry out self-guided work and deliver results on time
* Self-awareness and willingness to seek guidance and emotional support if experiencing overload
* Fundamentals of research ethics with human subjects
* How to search and analyze scholarly research literature
* How to develop data collection instruments though Qualtrics
* Basics of quantitative and qualitative research data analysis