Ethnography in Engineering Ethics Education: A Pedagogy for Transformational Listening

In engineering, listening is increasingly embraced as an essential professional skill. Listening instruction in engineering education, however, is rare. This paper proposes that listening to the diverse voices of publics affected by engineering decisions, discoveries, and products is crucial for ethical practice. It contends that listening can facilitate transformational engagement between engineers and the public by a) challenging stereotypes on both sides, b) foregrounding the technical and ethical relevance of diverse knowledges, c) exposing relationships of structural inequality that privilege technical expertise, and d) replacing such relationships with partnerships of trust that generate meaningful and effective solutions. Transformational listening lies at the heart of a graduate engineering ethics course at Virginia Tech and future online teaching modules, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goal is for students to experience the cognitive leap that ethnographic research methods can facilitate - moving from a stance of ignorance, confusion, and even outright disagreement concerning an unfamiliar position, to a stance of clarity and even appreciation for reasoning that can underlie marginalized or misunderstood perspectives. To illustrate the method, the paper focuses on a partnership between the class and a grassroots environmental health and justice organization in Buffalo, NY. This partnership was designed with two objectives: a) to support students to elicit and understand the knowledge, experiences, and goals of community members fighting a highly publicized case of environmental contamination; and b) to equip students to recognize the imbalances of power often entrenched in such cases. The goal was to teach students skills for grounding moral dilemmas in their social contexts, and for engaging in ethical reasoning that is informed by the values locally at stake. Strengths and limitations of the approach are explored through six lenses: that of the course co-instructor, two graduate students, and the director and two founding members of the partner organization. In closing, the paper discusses the potential of this pedagogy to help transform the relationship between engineers and the public by supporting morally engaged 21st century engineering practice.