(181c) Ethical Reasoning in the Engineering Curriculum

Although the provision of ethics in engineering curricula has increased in recent years, the teaching of engineering ethics remains patchy and sporadic in a number of countries. Ethics in research, on the other hand, appears to be at a more mature stage. At the same time, the number of ethical codes, codes of practice and research concordats has flourished, both nationally and internationally. The questions remain: are those codes “live”? Have those concordats resulted in an improvement of professional integrity? Is the teaching of ethics different and/or disconnected from ethics in research and in the workplace? Is ethics in chemical engineering different from ethics in other engineering disciplines? The paper analyses those questions in relation to an ever changing landscape, influenced by local and international drivers.