Engineering Ethics Education: A Comparative Study of Japan and Malaysia

This paper reports the findings of a comparative study in which students’ perceived attainment of the objectives of an engineering ethics education and their attitude towards engineering ethics were investigated and compared. The investigation was carried out in Japan and Malaysia, involving 163 and...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science and engineering ethics 2019-08, Vol.25 (4), p.1069-1083
Main Authors: Balakrishnan, Balamuralithara, Tochinai, Fumihiko, Kanemitsu, Hidekazu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Achievement
Attitude
Bioethics
Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering
Comparative studies
Curricula
Curriculum - standards
Decision Making - ethics
Education
Engineering
Engineering - education
Engineering - ethics
Ethics
Ethics, Professional - education
Humans
Japan
Malaysia
Medicine/Public Health
Original Paper
Philosophy
Philosophy of Science
Professional ethics
Social Responsibility
Statistical analysis
Students
Students - psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires
Teaching - ethics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper reports the findings of a comparative study in which students’ perceived attainment of the objectives of an engineering ethics education and their attitude towards engineering ethics were investigated and compared. The investigation was carried out in Japan and Malaysia, involving 163 and 108 engineering undergraduates respectively. The research method used was based on a survey in which respondents were sent a questionnaire to elicit relevant data. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed on the data. The results of the analyses showed that the attainment of the objectives of engineering ethics education and students’ attitude towards socio-ethical issues in engineering were significantly higher and positive among Japanese engineering students compared to Malaysian engineering students. Such findings suggest that a well-structured, integrated, and innovative pedagogy for teaching ethics will have an impact on the students’ attainment of ethics education objectives and their attitude towards engineering ethics. As such, the research findings serve as a cornerstone to which the current practice of teaching and learning of engineering ethics education can be examined more critically, such that further improvements can be made to the existing curriculum that can help produce engineers that have strong moral and ethical characters.
ISSN:1353-3452
1471-5546
DOI:10.1007/s11948-018-0051-3