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Social Responsibility and Ethics in STEM Education: The State of the Field

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Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM

Part of the book series: The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology ((ELTE,volume 42))

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Abstract

The relationship between ethics education and recent scholarship on social responsibility is crucial to explore. At times, ethics education has been designed to focus narrowly on compliance with rules and regulations. In contrast, other forms of ethics education emphasize direct attention to social responsibility and the types of obligations that future professionals have to society. In this chapter, we provide an overview of social responsibility, including some of its intellectual foundations, and discuss an important distinction to the realm of ethics education between personal and professional social responsibility. We also review some of the current social responsibility literature and describe connections between social responsibility and traditional approaches to ethics education. We conclude by highlighting opportunities for future research in the realm of social responsibility, including lessons learned from our own research. In particular, there is a need for further analysis of the long-term development of student social responsibility attitudes and their impact on professional practice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Project details, publications, and research tools are available at: https://serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu/institutional-transformation-project

  2. 2.

    For more information about Serve-Learn-Sustain at Georgia Tech, refer to: https://sls.gatech.edu/

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Acknowledgements

This chapter is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation Cultivating Cultures for Ethical STEM Program (Award #1635554). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Quintin Kreth & Jason Borenstein

  2. Department of Political Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Daniel S. Schiff

  3. Center for 21st Century Universities, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Jeonghyun Lee

  4. Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Jason Borenstein

  5. School of Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ellen Zegura

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  1. Quintin Kreth
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  2. Daniel S. Schiff
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  3. Jeonghyun Lee
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  4. Jason Borenstein
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  5. Ellen Zegura
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel S. Schiff .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA

    Elisabeth Hildt

  2. Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA

    Kelly Laas

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, AET, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Eric M. Brey

  4. Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, USA

    Christine Z. Miller

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Kreth, Q., Schiff, D.S., Lee, J., Borenstein, J., Zegura, E. (2024). Social Responsibility and Ethics in STEM Education: The State of the Field. In: Hildt, E., Laas, K., Brey, E.M., Miller, C.Z. (eds) Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM. The International Library of Ethics, Law and Technology, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51560-6_2

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