This project examines the value foundations that inform ethical reasoning among undergraduate and graduate students. To date, strategies for developing cultures of ethical and responsible research among STEM students have largely emphasized the formal ethical training and experiences that shape ethical decision-making and the conditions under which individuals are motivated to put decision-making strategies into practice. Much less attention has been given to the ways students’ internal values guide their professional conduct or how these values affect their attraction to and training within a STEM discipline. This has limited the development of ethical training protocols combining internal and external factors in cultivating ethically literate students and institutional cultures. Led by an interdisciplinary team at a 21st century research-intensive, Hispanic-serving institution, this project generates fundamental understanding about how the intersection of the implicit values that guide individuals and the explicit content and experiences of ethics education and training matter for ethical reasoning. Practically, the project develops methods for understanding the ways students negotiate personal values and reason ethically amid the disciplinary enculturation process, which is especially crucial to increasing and retaining diverse perspectives within STEM.
This project employs surveys of undergraduates and graduate students, linguistic coding and keyword analysis of professional ethics codes and curriculum modules, and correspondence analysis of qualitative data collected from workshops, focus groups, and interviews to investigate ethical reasoning among STEM students. It has three main objectives: (1) identify the extent to which individual values correlate with demographic differences and disciplinary choices, (2) analyze explicit ethical frameworks within and across STEM student experiences, and (3) understand intersections among internal values and formal ethical frameworks and how they affect disciplinary enculturation and ethical reasoning. Individual values and their demographic correlates are examined by administering the Moral Foundations Questionnaire to students in a mix of traditional and interdisciplinary STEM programs. The formal ethical training students receive is analyzed by applying linguistic coding and keyword analysis to ethics codes from professional bodies, curriculum modules, and other sources of ethics experience. Intersections between individual ethics and formal ethical training are studied by using correspondence analysis to analyze participant data collected through PI-led ethics workshops, focus groups, and individual interviews with a representative sample of student participants. Analyses will focus on whether and to what extent personal values map onto disciplinary values and the ways values are negotiated and established. Results will be compared to control-group data and assessed to determine how students enculturate to disciplinary norms. This project advances knowledge of STEM ethics, expands moral foundation theory, and enhances understanding of why some under-represented groups remain in STEM while others drop out.
This project has been funded by the CISE and ENG directorates.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
