INTEGRATING ETHICS INTO CONSTRUCTION CURRICULA

INTRODUCTION

Increasingly stringent and pervasive government regula­tions are a fact of life in our society. There are regulations covering business, manufacturing, finance, safety, the en­vironment, education, research, law, medicine, and govern­ment itself. The undesirable effects of these regulations include increasing costs, reducing international competi­tive position, restricting research and innovation, and in some cases, restricting actions that could ease human suffering.

The effects of these regulations have been widely decried both publicly and privately. These regulations, however, are the natural consequence of our own unwillingness to govern our actions according to the values and morals of our society. Soloman and Hanson state, "... people who do not talk about ethics often complain a great deal about regulation' without realizing that the two are intimately con­nected. Legal regulation is the natural response of both society and government to the practice of amorality..."(23) DeGeorge reports that regulations frequently represent the moral concerns of the people. (S) And Shea reports that the values of a society progress from widely held moral beliefs to formalized codes of ethics to laws that force conformance to societal values.(22)

A study conducted by the Josephson Institute for the Advancement of Ethics indicates that regulations may become even more stringent and pervasive in the future. The Josephson Institute reports, "An unprecedented pro­portion of today's youth lack commitment to core moral values like honesty, personal responsibility, respect for others and civic duty. "(19) This deterioration indicates that as the youth are added to the work force unethical practices will increase causing a corresponding increase in regulation.

If for no other reason than to reverse this trend in regulation, our society needs to train its members to live and work in keeping with society's core moral values.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the opportunity education has to meet this need, discuss problem areas in the currently used instructional methodology, identify solu­tions to these problems, and, from a synthesis of these solutions, suggest a methodology to train students to live and work in keeping with societal values.

OPPORTUNITY

Education has a special opportunity to train people to live and work in accord with societal values. In one of a series of articles on professional ethics in Chemical Engineering Progress, Tucker reports that professors have a unique opportunity to influence students' ethical development through mentoring and through connecting ethical concerns to professional situations in technical courses.(22) Vesilind observes, "Unwittingly, engineering educators are the teachers of morals, and this may be their single most important professional role."(24) Wilcox adds that students must see that ethics are integral to learning and to profes­sional practice in order to affect their personal values and behavior.(23) And, McCuen, Robertson, and Lindauer and Hagerty report that to be successful in influencing student ethical development, ethics should be integrated through­out the curriculum.(l6)(20)(15)

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

There are, however, three major problems to integrating ethics instruction into university curricula. These are: (1) a lack of consensus on values in our society, (2) faculty not having the time to integrate ethics throughout the curricu­lum, and (3) an instructional methodology that is ineffec­tive in changing the values and behavior of students.

1. Values Consensus

Tucker, Bowers, and Chewning all report that there is no broad consensus of values in our country.(2)(4) There is, therefore, no widely accepted system of values upon which to base professional behavior to avoid regulation, or upon which to base ethics instruction.

Others, however, maintain just the opposite. While report­ing that there is no widely accepted system of values in our country, Bowers says that the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution embody the values by which we govern ourselves. Bauer lists the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the sources of values that should be taught in classrooms.(1) And Saterlie reports that a task force representing the diversity of cultural, ethnic, and economic groups in the Baltimore Public School District agreed on the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the basis for the values that would be taught in their classrooms. Saterlie also reports that this choice was approved by such diverse groups as the ACLU, the PTA, the teachers association, and a number of religious organiza­tions.(21) The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, there­fore, express values that are widely held in our society.

These values can be easily determined from a reading of the documents. In the Declaration of Independence we find equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, security, civic duty, justice, and honor. In the United States Consti­tution we identify liberty, security, justice, and rule of law. And from the Bill of Rights we get liberty, civic duty, privacy, private property, life, and justice.

The effects of these commonly held values can be seen in our legal system today. For example, the recently passed civil rights legislation is based on the values of equality and justice. The increasingly stringent application of OSHA standards in the construction industry is based on the concern for human life. And the demand for effective crime control is based on the values of life, security, private property, and the rule of law.

Equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, security, civic duty, justice, honor, rule of law, privacy, and private property; these are the widely held values of our society, these are the values we must live by to avoid regulation, and these are the values that should serve as a basis for ethics instruction.

2. Integrating Ethics Into the Curriculum

While Lindauer and Hagerty agree that ethics must be integrated throughout the curriculum to be successful in influencing student development, they report that because of over‑crowded curricula, ethics is usually relegated to a portion of a senior level professional practices course.

Dunfee and Robertson also agree that ethics must be integrated throughout the curriculum, and they agree that course content constraints make it impossible to integrate ethics into every course. The alternative they offer is to add ethics modules to key courses in the curriculum. Typically, key courses are required for every student, are spread fairly evenly in a typical degree plan, and include a capstone course that provides an ethics overview for the program. The procedure used in this process includes identifying meaningful ethical topics and standards, choosing key courses, identifying appropriate subject matter for each course module, training department faculty, testing the modules in class, and evaluating the results. Dunfee and Robertson report a favorable response from faculty and students to early trials.

3. Instructional Methodology

The methodology currently used in teaching ethics is based on the assumption that there is no consensus of values in our society. Therefore, as Tucker, Vesilind, and Kremers maintain; there can be no set standard of behavior to serve as a basis for ethics instruction. Rather, teaching an ethical reasoning process and raising ethical awareness are the appropriate goals of ethics instruction. (26)(13)

The basic element in this methodology is the application of professional codes of conduct to case studies in class discussions. This approach is reported by Koehn, Jones, Herkert and Viscomi, and Lindauer and Hagerty as modules added to required courses; by the University of Cincinnati as an elective seminar; and by Robertson, Wilcox, Jones,

and Hassler as one or two hour professional ethics courses.(12)(11)(10)(7)(9) To this basic core the Univer­sity of Cincinnati, Robertson, Jones, Lindauer and Hagerty, and Gunnand Vesilind add lectures on basic ethical theory.(8) The University of Cincinnati and Hassler add guest speak­ers. Hassler adds interviews and mock professional conduct hearings. Robertson, Hassler, and Kremers add written reports. The University of Cincinnati and Herkert and Viscomi add small group discussions. And, Jones adds exposure to Kohlberg's stages theory.

None of the papers on ethics instruction in engineering report any study to determine the effectiveness of this methodology in changing values and behavior. Studies have been conducted, however, in business curricula. Jones reports that the basic theory employed by these studies reasons that while the effect of ethics education is difficult to measure directly in terms of actual performance, it can be measured indirectly by change in moral development. This change is measured by means of the Defining Issues Test. This test is administered at the beginning of a program to provide control data, given at the end of the program to measure change, and given again several months later to confirm that the change is permanent. Jones reports that the studies determined that:

Based on these results, one would conclude that the basic core methodology employed in full length courses should prove effective in assisting students' moral development. That this methodology has proved ineffective is illustrated by the continuing discussion about ethics education, the numerous reports of refinements to the basic core, and the presentation of alternate methods, such as Smith's elimination of code and case studies altogether in favor of just teaching the ethical reasoning process.(3) While this basic core is an essential element in promoting moral development, it appears that other elements must be added to insure that this development takes place.

These other elements are suggested by the values discussion above and by Jones'report. As has been shown, society does have widely held values, and behavior contrary to these values results in regulation. Therefore, by not teaching these widely held values, this instructional methodology exacerbates the regulation problem. Further, the Josephson study indicates that our youth are not receiving this instruc­tion elsewhere. Consequently, their ethical development has been arrested. Needed, therefore, is not only the inclusion of societal values in ethics instruction, but an instructional methodology that is effective in continuing the ethical development process. Jones reports that exposure to Kohlberg's stages theory enhances this process. Therefore, an instructional methodology based on the stages theory and incorporating societal values should provide the additional elements needed to continue ethical development.

Shea, and Lande and Slade provide a description of the stages theory and report the incorporation of the theory into a teaching methodology. They report that Kohlberg's stages theory is based on the observation that individuals mature morally and ethically in identifiable stages. Lande and Slade identify six stages in this process: (I) Obedience or Punishment, (2) Market Place Morality, (3) Conformity, (4) Law and Order, (5) Social Contract, and (6) Universal Human Rights. Shea adds a seventh stage which he calls, "Integrity."

Shea, and Lande and Slade report that although this matu­ration process can be arrested at any level, it can be restarted by first presenting these stages in class lectures, then exploring the stages through role play and class discussion of case studies, and finally through experiencing the stages in subsequent life experiences. Lande and Slade further report that the response from a limited number of the participants in their program indicated that the maturation process begun during the program continued in the years following.(14)

SOLUTION

Recommended solutions, therefore, to the problems in integrating ethics instruction into university curricula are:

Incorporating a synthesis of these solutions should provide a viable methodology to train students to live and work in accord with societal values.

PROPOSED METHODOLOGY

The proposed methodology uses basic societal values to provide a guide for behavior to avoid regulation, the key course concept as an alternative to adding ethics to each course while showing that ethics has relevance for educa­tion and professional practice, and stages to provide a teaching methodology that is effective in changing values and behavior. Implementation of the methodology follows the steps of the key course concept modified to allow the addition of a longitudinal study to evaluate the influence on students' values and behavior. These steps are:

Based on the results reported by Jones, it is expected that there will be little or no change as the result of any one module. It is expected, however, that the cumulative effect of a series of these modules will produce significant change. Further, Jones reports no continuing study to determine the effect ethics instruction has in the years following gradua­tion. This methodology will fill that gap.

IMPLEMENTATION

To date the methodology has only been partially imple­mented in the Building Science curriculum at Auburn University. A typical key course module has been tested in a sophomore level materials class and a senior level con­tracting business class, and an ethics overview module has been tested in a senior level project management class.

The typical key course module requires about an hour and a half. Because students have had little, if any, exposure to the industry at the sophomore level, it was considered more appropriate to incorporate standards and case studies deal­ing with educational topics in the materials class. There­fore, in addition to societal values and stages information, a statement of standards adopted by the Auburn University Student Government Association and case studies dealing with cheating, stealing, etc., were presented in lecture. The following questions were asked for each case study:

Because there were 77 students in the class no meaningful discussion could take place. Therefore, the professor answered questions 1, 2, and 3 in lecture. He left answering question 4 to the individual. The module was closed with the question, "At what stage of moral development are you?"

The key course module in the senior level contracting business class started with lectures covering societal val­ues, stages information, and professional ethical standards, and continued with class discussions of case studies con­cerning construction business. The professional ethical standards used were "Responsibilities of a Large Contract­ing Company," the Standards of Professional Conduct of the American Institute of Constructors, the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Home Builders, and the Code of Ethical Conduct of Associated General Contractors.(15) For each of the case studies the following questions were asked.

Because there were only 22 in the class, the students could answer the questions for themselves in class discussion. The question, "At what stage of moral development are you?" was asked and left for individual consideration.

The overview module requires about three hours of class time. Lecture and class discussion for this module was much the same as for the senior level key course module. The analysis of professional ethical standards, however, could be more detailed and could become the subject of class discussion. Also, there was time for more case study discussion. At the end of the module the students prepared a brief paper answering the four questions for a given case and answering the question "At what stage of moral development are you?".

The methodology has worked well and has been well received by both faculty and students. Student interest was evident in the sophomore level class and student interest and participation were particularly evident in the senior level classes. However, funds have not been available to fully implement the program or to conduct the evaluation. A proposal is being prepared for submittal to the National Science Foundation for a grant for these funds.

CONCLUSION

Our society is plagued by the regulation brought on by our own unwillingness to conduct our affairs according to societal values. Current ethics instruction has been ineffec­tive in relieving this problem because: (1) it is based on the mistaken belief that there is no consensus of values in our society, and, therefore, it fails to teach these values, (2) it has failed to integrate ethics sufficiently in the curriculum to show that ethics is relevant to education and professional life, and (3) it uses an instructional methodology which is ineffective in continuing the moral development of stu­dents. The values embodied in the Declaration of Indepen­dence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are widely accepted by our society; the key course concept provides a viable alternative to adding ethics to each course in a curriculum; and the stages methodology is effective in continuing students' moral development. A synthesis of these concepts provides a methodology that should prove effective in training students to live and work in accord with societal values. This methodology has been partially integrated into a construction curriculum with good re­sponse from faculty and students. Funding is needed to complete the integration and to conduct a study to deter­mine the effectiveness of the methodology in changing students' values and behavior.

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