Repositioning ethics at the heart of engineering graduate attributes

ABSTRACT The integration of ethics in engineering education has largely been focused at the curriculum design level. The authors posit that this integration be done at the accreditation level and investigate how ethics may be more extensively incorporated in the documentation of a particular engineering accreditation body’s qualification standards. The paper proceeds, by means of a narrative review, to justify an expanded conception of the teaching of ethics within engineering education. It builds a synthesis of contrasting conceptual approaches to the teaching of ethics within engineering and proposes a conceptual framework to guide both regulators and educators to identify and engage with different elements of the ethics across the curriculum within an engineering programme. The South African case study provides a context to engage with existing policy formulation around programme accreditation and to demonstrate the application of the proposed conceptual framework across the graduate attributes so to indicate how ethics might be more comprehensively integrated within a programme. This demonstrates that ethics needs to be repositioned at the centre of the preparation of engineers, rather than at the periphery. The expected consequence of this integration is the more extensive incorporation of ethics within and across accredited engineering programmes.