Learning to prioritize the public good: Does training in classes, workplaces, and professional societies shape engineers' understanding of their public welfare responsibilities?

Abstract

Background

Engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well-being of the public impacted by the technologies they design and maintain. In an increasingly complex sociotechnical world, engineering educators and professional institutions have a duty to train engineers in these responsibilities.

Purpose/Hypothesis

This article asks, where are engineers trained in their public welfare responsibilities, and how effective is this training? We argue that engineers trained in public welfare responsibilities, especially within engineering education, will demonstrate greater understanding of their duty to recognize and respond to public welfare concerns. We expect training in formal engineering classes to be more broadly impactful than training in contexts like work or professional societies.

Data/Methods

We analyze unique survey data from a representative sample of US practicing engineers using descriptive and regression techniques.

Results

Consistent with expectations, engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in engineering classes are more likely than other engineers to understand their responsibilities to protect public health and safety and problem-solve collectively, to recognize the importance of social consequences and ethical responsibilities in their own jobs, to have noticed ethical issues in their workplace, and to have taken action about an issue that concerned them. Training through other parts of college, workplaces, or professional societies has comparatively little impact. Concerningly, nearly a third of engineers reported never being trained in public welfare responsibilities.

Conclusion

These results suggest that training in engineering education can shape engineers' long-term understanding of their public welfare responsibilities. They underscore the need for these responsibilities to be taught as a core, non-negotiable part of engineering education.