Teaching Ethics in Design: A Review of Current Practice
Year: 2009
Editor: Norell Bergendahl, M.; Grimheden, M.; Leifer, L.; Skogstad, P.; Lindemann, U.
Author: Lofthouse, Vicky; Lilley, Debra
Series: ICED
Section: Design Education and Lifelong Learning
Page(s): 137-148
Abstract
This paper reflects on the findings from a benchmarking study which investigated current approaches for teaching ethics to designers and engineers. The research has been carried out as part of a one year Academic Practice Award which is being delivered by staff in the Department of XXX at XXXX University (June 2008 - June 2009) and aims to develop new teaching material for teaching ethics via blended learning. Although the teaching of ethics is recognized as being important in design and engineering, the practice of doing so has only become established in the last five years and only by a limited number of institutions. This paper presents the types of issues that are currently being taught to students on a range of different types of design courses in the US and Europe. It also draws on the literature to reflect on additional methods which might be appropriate for teaching ethics in design. The lessons learned will be fed into the development of new material for integrating ethics into the teaching of design and technology students.
Keywords: Ethics teaching, product design