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Making Choices: Ethical Decisions in a Global Context

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Abstract

The changing milieu of research—increasingly global, interdisciplinary and collaborative—prompts greater emphasis on cultural context and upon partnership with international scholars and diverse community groups. Ethics training, however, tends to ignore the cross-cultural challenges of making ethical choices. This paper confronts those challenges by presenting a new curricular model developed by an international team. It examines ethics across a very broad range of situations, using case studies and employing the perspectives of social science, humanities and the sciences. The course has been developed and taught in a highly collaborative way, involving researchers and students at Zhejiang University, the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Brown University. The article presents the curricular modules of the course, learning outcomes, an assessment framework developed for the project, and a discussion of evaluation findings.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation. Our work was funded through the EESE program (Ethics Education in Science and Engineering), Proposal Number 0933509.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, Box 1855, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Sheila Bonde & Amy Huang

  2. School of Engineering, Brown University, Box D, 184 Hope Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Clyde Briant

  3. Humanities and Social Sciences, Wentworth Institute of Technology, 550 Huntingdon Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Paul Firenze

  4. Research Ethics and Education Policy, Office of the Vice President for Research, Brown University, 47 George Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Julianne Hanavan

  5. Department of Linguistics, Zhejiang University, 308 Alumni Center, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Min Li

  6. Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India

    N. C. Narayanan

  7. Department of Humanities and Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India

    D. Parthasarathy

  8. School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Hongqin Zhao

Authors
  1. Sheila Bonde
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  2. Clyde Briant
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  3. Paul Firenze
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  4. Julianne Hanavan
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  5. Amy Huang
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  6. Min Li
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  7. N. C. Narayanan
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  8. D. Parthasarathy
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  9. Hongqin Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Clyde Briant.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Pre-participation Evaluation Survey: Ethics in an International Context

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Appendix 2: Post-participation Evaluation Survey: Ethics in an International Context

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Appendix 3: Focus Group Interview Protocol—Students

  1. 1.

    Why be ethical? (If focus group interview, ask each person to map out a response to this—graphics—images—words—on a large post-it; then explain the post-it to the group).

  2. 2.

    To what extent did participation in the ethics course influence the way you answer the question, “Why be ethical?”

  3. 3.

    What were the most striking “take-aways” from the seminar as you reflect on the past year?

  4. 4.

    What topics/themes/cases do you think prompted new thinking about ethics in a global context? (Probe for explanation of why).

  5. 5.

    In retrospect—least helpful?

  6. 6.

    To what extent has the seminar influenced how you make ethical decisions?

  7. 7.

    To what extent has it impacted your choice of study, work or research?

  8. 8.

    Think about the format of the seminar. What types of activities prompted the most learning for you? (assigned readings, class discussions, case study analyses, weekly assignments, working on the “Ethical Framework”, research and writing your final paper, video conference with Chinese and Indian students)

  9. 9.

    Looking back, would you recommend changes to the course that would enhance learning?

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Bonde, S., Briant, C., Firenze, P. et al. Making Choices: Ethical Decisions in a Global Context. Sci Eng Ethics 22, 343–366 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9641-5

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