INVESTIGATING THE PHILOSOPHICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF ENGINEERING ETHICS EDUCATION (A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW)

The aim of the present study was to investigate the philosophical infrastructure of professional ethics education in engineering colleges along with the introduction of important and neglected philosophical approaches in this field. Philosophical school of thought, in addition to being regarded as lenses for examining engineering ethics education, are also influential in setting engineering education programs and can create a balance between scientific and non-scientific subjects. In this way engineering colleges can train engineers who are both experts in science and knowledge, and also have engineering ethics. In this field various studies and results have been reported. By a systematic review method the studies at the end of 2021 are compiled and compared. The Scopus and Magiran search engines are searched by examining the terms “philosophy” and “engineering ethics education” in the title, keywords and abstracts of articles. The results of the studies show one important philosophical infrastructure and eight neglected philosophical infrastructures. 82.76% of the articles considered modernism as the dominant but ineffective approach, and 65.52% of the articles identified the lack of attention to the comprehensive (inclusive) approach in teaching engineering ethics as the most neglected approach. The position of postmodernism, phenomenology, human-centered, comprehensive, religious, collaborative, situational, critical, constructivist approaches in educating ethical and professional engineers are empty in the current era.