Mapping engineering ethics education

Writing a handbook implies describing the fundamental information needed by those teaching or researching in a field. This is a challenging task when the field is still maturing. This handbook grew from the idea that we could ‘collaboratively write’ engineering ethics education. In this introduction, we define the field in three dimensions: engineering, ethics, and education. The latter dimension is divided into three parts: the subjects that shape the teaching of engineering ethics education, the understanding of learners and learning that informs the pedagogical choices made, and the fusion of these two in the pedagogical methods used in teaching engineering ethics. Mapping these three dimensions implies taking an interdisciplinary approach, writing in a multi-perspectival way, and striving to critically reflect on – some in the editorial team would say ‘decolonize’ – the discourses that have traditionally dominated engineering ethics education. Since our starting point was to write engineering ethics education collaboratively, our process in editing this handbook meant we tried to be open to a wide diversity of voices while at the same time working to create coherence within chapters, within thematic sections, and across the book as a whole – without losing the possibility to say something significant about where engineering ethics education is today as a research area and as a topic for teaching. Working with 108 authors, the result is a collaborative, rich, multi-perspectival text.