Responsible research and innovation and tertiary education in chemistry and chemical engineering

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and chemistry / chemical engineering education at university level. It does so by describing the genealogy of the RRI concept as well as outlining three different interpretations of what RRI refers to and combining them into the hexagon model of RRI. This model constitutes the theoretical framework for this work. The second part of the paper addresses how the science and engineering education research literature has embraced insights from RRI. The hexagon model of RRI explicitly includes a dimension on (science and engineering) education, and this paper will contribute to this dimension by investigating and discussing how research literature can link RRI and tertiary chemistry and chemical engineering education. The paper shows that very limited work has been done to liaise chemistry higher education and chemical engineering education with the RRI framework. In the concluding section of the paper, we discuss how the reported educational experiences on RRI in STEM can be translated into higher education in chemical engineering and chemistry. Hereby a proposal to fill the identified knowledge gap is made. The core of the paper is conceptual, and its central purpose is to introduce RRI to a chemical engineering and chemistry ethics education audience. As mentioned, the RRI approach has gone largely unnoticed within engineering ethics education, and only received limited attention within ethics of chemistry education. We hope that these research communities will find it inspirational to get involved in the RRI framework and to actively enact RRI insights.