How to Teach Engineering Ethics? A Retrospective and Prospective Sketch of TU Delft’s Approach to Engineering Ethics Education

Oct 15, 2026

This paper provides a retrospective and prospective overview of TU Delft’s approach to engineering ethics education. For over twenty years, the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section has led ethics education for a wide range of engineering and design students. The approach draws on Responsible Research and Innovation, Design for Values, and Risk Ethics, viewing technologies as value-laden and enabling students to prevent harm and do good. It reviews past teaching, current activities, and future plans for bachelor and master levels.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

ABSTRACT

BEST PRACTICES FOR ENGINEERING ETHICS EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

ENGINEERING ETHICS AT TU DELFT: THEORETICAL APPROACHES

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | FALL 2021 How to Teach Engineering Ethics? A Retrospective and Prospective Sketch of TU Delft’s Approach to Engineering Ethics Education JANNA VAN GRUNSVEN LAVINIA MARIN TAYLOR STONE SABINE ROESER NEELKE DOORN Delft University of Technology Delft, The Netherlands ABSTRACT This paper provides a retrospective and prospective overview of TU Delft’s approach to engineering ethics education. For over twenty years, the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section at TU Delft has been at the forefront of engineering ethics education, offering education to a wide range of engineering and design students. The approach developed at TU Delft is deeply informed by the research of the Section, which is centred around Responsible Research and Innovation, Design for Values, and Risk Ethics. These theoretical approaches are premised on the notion that technologies are inherently value-laden, and as such contain the possibility of fostering or hindering moral values. Each of these approaches encourages students to take a proactive attitude with respect to their projects and profession, thinking creatively about – and taking responsibility for – how to both prevent harm and do good via the technologies they help develop. To explain how this is put into practice, this paper sketches a brief history of ethics teaching at TU Delft, outlines current activities, and presents future plans for Bachelor and Master’s level engineering ethics education at TU Delft. Key words: Ethics, Social responsibility, Philosophy of engineering education “Whether we are to have a good society or a bad one is powerfully influenced by the technologies we develop and put to use. For that reason the role of engineers and technical professionals is crucial. They are intimately involved in maintaining key social patterns and in inventing new ones as well. In that work they become, in effect, unelected delegates and ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION How to Teach Engineering Ethics? A Retrospective and Prospective Sketch of TU Delft’s Approach to Engineering Ethics Education representatives of the rest of us, charged with the work of building basic structures of our social and political future.” (Winner 1990, 58) BEST PRACTICES FOR ENGINEERING ETHICS EDUCATION IN THE 21ST CENTURY With explicit intention or not, engineers shape much of our modern world. The decisions made about the design, use, maintenance, and disposal of products, services, and infrastructures have far-reaching individual, socio-political, and ecological ramifications. This means that engineering decisions require explicit ethical reflection. That engineering comes with a high burden of moral responsibility may appear to many as a truism explicitly acknowledged by most professional organizations in their Codes of Conduct. At the same time, the ethical responsibilities and choices intertwined with engineering are often grossly underappreciated or even willfully undermined (Herkert 2001) . In part, this stems from the still fairly common tendency to frame “ethics” as something separate from the education and practice of engineering (Bucciarelli 2008), hence seen as a task for others, the non-engineers. Fortunately, more and more engineering education programs have started to embrace ethics education as an essential feature of engineering and design curricula. The core idea is to instill not just technical skills in engineering students, but also to foster awareness of, and responsiveness to, the ethical values and consequences at stake in engineering contexts. By itself, this trend to understand engineering more comprehensively is a laudable one. However, with the growing acknowledgement that ethics should play a central role in engineering education comes the challenge of determining exactly how it should be designed and taught. How will engineering st

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the paper?

The paper offers a retrospective and prospective overview of TU Delft’s approach to engineering ethics education, including how it is implemented and how it may develop.

Which theoretical approaches inform TU Delft’s engineering ethics education?

The approach is informed by Responsible Research and Innovation, Design for Values, and Risk Ethics.

How does the paper connect engineering and ethical responsibility?

It argues that engineering decisions about design, use, maintenance, and disposal carry far-reaching ethical consequences, requiring explicit ethical reflection.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Nguyễn Văn Học