Include ethics education in the engineering curriculum — The students' perspective

The ethics and civic education of engineering students has been recognized as fundamental, however this training component is still very absent from the Portuguese engineering courses. Several concepts and perspectives may lead to include or exclude ethical education of the curriculum. Teachers are the main actors in the curriculum development process, and the students' voice and perspective in this process usually remain unknown. On the other hand, students are the main potential damaged by the absence of an ethics educational project within their courses. It is considering this problem as a starting point, that the study presented here aims to communicate an investigation that intends to hear the students' voice, about their perspective on ethics education field, and about its practical implementation. This research is part of a case study and research-action. The results indicate that students are very receptive to this training component, and they consider that it should be included as mandatory in engineering courses. The results also show that students prefer a more practical training with `prescription' characteristics.