ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a theoretical framework that considers response-able engineering as something that emerges from situated doings, collective knowing, sociomateriality, and the texture of practices. This concept of response-ability captures an understanding of ethics as something that emerges in practice. It implies an openness to the call of others and a capacity for responsiveness. Ethics is thus always conceived as situated, and educational practices must be grounded in concrete situations: they should not be discussed based on abstract and universalizing ethical concepts, but rather on complex situations emerging from professional practices. The chapter uses three vignettes to illustrate how the proposed framework might be put to work and how it might be helpful in the context of engineering education to support reflection on ethics, responsibility, and sustainability within professional practices. The vignettes suggest a discussion of three situations: (a) environmental caring between policy-making activity and collective doings; (b) competing sociomaterial moralities emerging in the circular economy; and (c) a shift from hydroengineering to situated water engineering.
