ABSTRACT

Research in psychology has shown that the development of moral cognition can be quantified and scored. This chapter illustrates the parallels between moral development and the development of professional engineering ethics. Kohlberg's data led him to organize six Piagetian stages of moral development, in three levels. These are outlined, based on summaries by Rest and Colby as Preconventional, Conventional and Postconventional or principled. Using this notion of the similitude between private moral development and professional moral development, Richard Mc Cuen5 has suggested six stages of professional development. One criticism of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg is that they measure moral development on the basis of verbal responses to structured moral dilemmas. It has been shown by numerous researchers, however, that what one thinks about a situation is often quite different from how one acts in a similar predicament. In engineering, as in every aspect of life, the ulti mate test of moral development is manifested in actions.