ABSTRACT
This chapter critically examines engineering ethics education (EEE) in the context of accreditation and research. It explores how three parallel goals of EEE – teaching future engineers, maintaining accreditation, and conducting educational research – come together and into conflict with each other. The chapter provides a critical understanding of the power dynamics and epistemic hierarchies limiting EEE and accreditation. It advocates consideration of EEE accreditation as a Western concept that tends to exclude other perspectives. The authors combine a literature review with feminist critical analysis, leaning on the authority of experience and reading the silences in texts. Rather than tracing causality by inferring from empirical data, they employ a narrative methodology to augment their findings with personal experiences and anecdotes. They examine epistemic power relations within engineering accreditation; the reductionism and assess-ability; how boundaries are drawn; and EEE as a rhetorical justification, performative discourse artifact, and feckless change strategy. The authors conclude by arguing that, inadvertently, engineering educators are puppeteers of accreditation who perpetuate inauthentic change and are thus limiting transformative engineering ethics education. The chapter considers how to turn these philosophical discussions into action.
