The “Real Images” of Engineering Ethics Education: An Analysis Based on Systematic Literature Review(SLR)

Abstract

In the past two decades, the research on engineering ethics education has made great progress and gone through the stages of “theoretical exploration”, “education system construction” and “reflective evaluation”. The paper used a method of systematic literature review to conduct literature review of 155 journal papers from the Web of Science database and China National Knowledge Infrastructure database published from January 2000 to December 2019. The paper made clear three research questions including “teaching strategies” “assessment methods” and “the factors affecting the effect of engineering ethics education”. The conclusions include: (1) Online classes, integrating engineering ethics into graduate essay writing or vertex courses, and seminar for advanced engineering students are increasingly becoming important classroom delivery strategies; (2) The teaching content of Engineering ethics in China pays more attention to the teaching of craftsman spirit, excellent traditional culture, patriotism and model worker spirit; (3) The most common methods for integrating ethics into engineering involved case studies, discussion or debate and guided teaching, which account for 76%, 52% and 34% respectively; (4) At present, the United States has formed a relatively complete and scientific evaluation tool system for engineering ethics education, which comprehensively uses quantitative and qualitative assessments and pays attention to the diversity of evaluation subjects and evaluation environment, while obvious deficiencies remain in the evaluation of engineering ethics education in China; (5) The personal experience, teaching content, teaching method, gender, guidance from teachers or tutors and peer mentoring of engineering students have significant influence on the effect of engineering ethics education.