LABORATORY AND NETWORK FOR THE CULTURAL STUDIES OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (LANCSET)

Featured Publication

Zhu. Q., & Clancy, R. (2023). Constructing a role ethics approach to engineering ethics education. Ethics & Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2023.2249740

This paper is concerned about the gap between the ideology of “autonomous individualism” deeply embedded in Western-centric engineering ethics education and the social and relational nature of engineering practice. The so-called “individualistic approach” to engineering ethics often treats students as fully rational and autonomous individual decision-makers. Such an approach mainly emphasizes teaching students moral reasoning skills, including the skills of applying dominant Western ethical theories (mainly deontology and consequentialism) into hypothetical cases. What might be overlooked or could be further emphasized in dominant approaches to engineering ethics education is what philosophers would call the “role ethics” of engineers or the moral obligations derived from the specific roles engineers assume and the relationships they have developed with others in communal contexts. This paper aims to construct a role-based approach to teaching professional ethics to engineering students. This paper draws extensively on the role ethics theories from the Confucian philosophical tradition. It first provides a short introduction to the fundamentals of Confucian role ethics. It then discusses what a role-based approach to engineering ethics might entail. Finally, this paper briefly explores how the insights from role ethics can inform future engineering ethics education.

Who We Are

LANCSET (Laboratory and Network for the Cultural Studies of Engineering and Technology) is an interdisciplinary research group at Virginia Tech.

Based in Virginia Tech, LANCSET is an open, inclusive laboratory & community consisting of scholars committed to studying technology and engineering from culturally responsive perspectives. The group is committed to making visible and challenging cultural values and ideologies prominent in training, practices, and policies surrounding engineering and technology, using empirical and experimental methodologies to study the effects of cultural values and norms on these environments. LANCSET explores cultural factors affecting technological ecologies responsible for deprioritizing, marginalizing, or excluding individuals and groups, working to incorporate cultural resources from overlooked, non-Western traditions – especially Confucianism – into the design of professional training and emerging technologies, for example, robotics and AI-enabled technologies. It also conducts philosophical and critical studies of cultural practices in engineering education (e.g., medicalization and psychologization).

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