THE ASSESSMENT OF ETHICS: LESSONS FOR PLANNERS FROM ENGINEERING EDUCATION’S GLOBAL STRATEGY - read online free

Oct 15, 2026

This translational scoping study investigates how ethics learning is assessed in engineering education worldwide and interprets concepts and practices for relevance to educational planners at the postsecondary level. It explains how global standardization is achieved through calibration processes that enable infusion of prioritized abilities across engineering graduates. The study synthesizes research and policy on engineering ethics education to support planners’ understanding of ethics, including global responsibility and sustainability, and proposes directions for future systematic investigation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research questions and analytical review

Background into the global context of engineering

THE ASSESSMENT OF ETHICS: LESSONS FOR PLANNERS FROM ENGINEERING EDUCATION’S GLOBAL STRATEGY SHANNON CHANCE Technological University Dublin, Ireland and University College London, UK DIANA ADELA MARTIN Technological University Eindhoven, Netherlands CATHERINE DEEGAN Technological University Dublin, Ireland ABSTRACT This translational scoping study investigates how ethics learning is assessed in engineering education worldwide and interprets concepts and practices for relevance to educational planners at the postsecondary level. It provides insights on how engineering education has achieved a level of standardization globally, a calibration process that has facilitated infusion of prioritized abilities across engineering graduates broadly. The engineering education system is designed and maintained through a series of multi-jurisdictional accords that seek to prepare engineering graduates for a global marketplace of engineered products, goods, and services. This paper synthesizes existing literature (research and policy) related to engineering ethics education (EEE), providing a useful introduction to planners regarding ethics, understood to incorporate global responsibility and sustainability. Conclusions provide a foundation for a further systematic investigation of EEE at a global level, highlighting implications of this scoping study for teaching, research, and planning. INTRODUCTION To address global challenges, educators and planners need to work together to infuse ethics across all realms of educational planning (Chance, 2012) . Ethics must underpin all educational offering from individual course/modules to program curricula, with consideration for formal as well as informal learning environments. Ethics also needs to become a core principle in planning, fundraising, operations, and maintenance (Chance & Cole, 2015) . We understand ethics in abroad manner, to include aspects of professional and global responsibility, as well as social and environmental sustainability (Martin, 2020) . This article examines the assessment and evaluation of ethics in engineering education, focusing on how to transfer learning from engineering ethics education and research into educational planning beyond the field of engineering. Our aim is to help educational planners identify conceptsand practices supporting the integration of ethics across a diverse range of academic activities and institutional practices, including curriculum design and assessment. Engineering education has taken a multi-pronged approach that involves research, the scholarship of teaching and learning (i.e., applying research-informed pedagogies), and accreditation standards shared via multinational accords. As part of these efforts, the engineering ethics education community has been working together to promote and support the integration of ethics into engineering curricula. Most often, this has been achieved through the adoption of specific modules with targeted content, but the community is also advocating for more holistic approaches. Educational Planning | Fall 2022 23 Vol. 29, No. 3 They debate the value of micro-inserts across the curriculum and institution wide and of dedicated ethics modules (Martin, Conlon, & Bowe, 2021a). Because this community is succeeding at sowing the seeds of ethics education in specific modules and now, increasingly, weaving these more broadly across programs, we believe their example will be of interest to experts involved in institutional or policy planning. The study scopes the education literature on assessment and evaluation of ethics in engineering, to address one overarching research question: What aspects of engineering ethics education can be of use to educational planners? We supplement this with three sub-questions: 1. In what ways are engineering students’ abilities in ethics measured and assessed? 2. What new research could help us better assess the ethical abilities of students? 3. Wha

FAQs

What is the main focus of the paper on ethics learning?

The paper examines how ethics and its assessment are approached in engineering education worldwide, and how those insights can be used by educational planners beyond engineering.

What overarching research question guides the study?

What aspects of engineering ethics education can be useful to educational planners?

How does the paper connect ethics assessment to global engineering systems?

It links assessment approaches to accreditation systems and multi-jurisdictional accords that align engineering practices globally, supporting the transfer of ethical learning to other educational planning contexts.

Oct 15, 2026

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