Standard Research: Developing Ethical STEM Research Competency and Self-Efficacy in High School and College Engineering Courses

This project aims to develop instructional materials that support ethical practices in STEM at the high school and undergraduate levels to improve student outcomes and self-efficacy related to ethical STEM research. Through the design and implementation of STEM research ethics modules in an undergraduate engineering curriculum, the project generates data related to the ethical knowledge, reasoning skills, attitudes, and practices of several thousand engineering undergraduate students.

This snapshot in turn informs the development of a three-week enrichment opportunity for high school STEM teachers. Working with university faculty and graduate students, high school teachers are supported in developing learning modules on ethical issues and implementing them in the high school context. Project data also guides the creation of targeted interventions that will be used in second, third, and fourth year engineering courses.

A second data snapshot is then taken by testing and surveying engineering students in their capstone courses to provide a broad overview of the competence and self-confidence that engineering students have in dealing with ethical STEM issues, to determine the efficacy of various interventions, and to improve future interventions.

This data-driven project uses a mixed-methods approach to generate a better understanding of the impact of ethics interventions at various points in a student's academic development by developing and using a set of instruments to measure cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of ethical competency and self-efficacy. Utilizing repeated measures and possessing a longitudinal dimension, the project generates data about the development of ethical competency, ethical self-efficacy, and the relationships between competency, self-efficacy, and the instructional interventions.

The interventions designed for secondary and tertiary classrooms build on best practices for micro-insertion of ethics content that are practical and help students understand how technical competencies fit within broader social, economic, and environmental contexts. The capstone data collection also provides a measure of the impact of other experiences (e.g., undergraduate research, internships, Engineers Without Borders) and courses (e.g., humanities, social science, and business courses) on ethical development.

The project has a secondary benefit of improving the allocation of class time and other educational resources to inform the ways in which STEM ethics education can be integrated into STEM coursework.

This project is also supported by the NSF HSI and DRK-12 programs. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools.

Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.

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.