Environmental Studies Certificate Program (EN)
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Management Game

Reflecting (missing) Ethics within the Natural Sciences

12.12.2019

by Julius Feucht

Supervisor: Dr Gesa Lüdecke

The final project I undertook for the Environmental Studies Program (ESP) of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society was a workshop concerning the ethics of scientists. I have a background in physics and felt that the topic was not addressed during my studies. Appreciating this topic as being important, the goal of the workshop was to encourage other science and engineering students to think about it. In the following paragraphs, the planning process of the workshop and the workshop itself are presented as well as feedback of the participants and a final reflection.

Project Development

I perceived many students from within the natural sciences to have a positive attitude towards technological progress, however, they often did not consider the negative side effects as being important. As in most curricula of natural sciences, there is a lack of ethical reflection, the goal of the workshop was thus to raise awareness and offer a new and critical point of view about the ethical dimension of the work of natural scientists and engineers. This topic at the intersections of environment, society, technology, and science is also an attempt toward achieving cross-disciplinarity and overcoming mental borders. This interdisciplinary approach used here is also inspired by the courses and students from the ESP.

The Workshop

The format of the workshop was a management game. The setting of the management game was the meeting of a student council with the workshop participants as members. The starting point was a provocative letter to the student council, in which scientists and students of science are accused of taking part in imperialism and global relations of exploitation (see the letter in section 5.3). Li-ion batteries were given as an example of applied science, which does not take negative effects on the environment and people in the supply chain into account. Some follow-up questions for the participants were prepared (see section 5.4). The participants (see section 5.1) then could choose, which topic they wanted to focus on and discuss them in small groups. They should discuss the question(s) and elaborate a proposal of what the student council should do regarding their question. Afterwards, the subgroups had to present the main results of their discussion with each other. After all the results were presented, the participants had to decide on the next steps of the student council.

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Results

The participants concluded that the student council should take the following next steps:
• To advocate for mandatory ethics courses in science and engineering curricula.
• To advocate at their university for easier access to courses in other disciplines.
• To influence politicians in order to give science more weight in the political decision-making process.

Another final observation was that all members of the student council are already decision-makers in their daily life. So raising awareness within themselves and in personal contact with others was also seen as a way to improve the present situation.

The Intention of the Workshop Design

This format is thought to be a good way to raise awareness for the topic for the following reasons:

  • First knowledge about the negative consequences of technology is activated. Then it is connected to an activity (investigation) the participants can relate to.
  • The setting of the management game is near to participants' own life experiences, so they can relate easily.
  • The provocative student letter as a starting point should introduce the topic and also activate emotions in the participants, which motivates people to work on it.
  • During most of the workshop, the participants could talk and/or think themselves. So there were not just passive listeners like in most of their lectures.
  • The setting of a student council meeting, which needs to agree on its next steps, encourages a solution-oriented discussion.

Feedback and Reflection


Feedback of Participants

feedback

Personal Reflection on the Final Project

The feedback of the participants was mostly positive, which shows that the main goal of raising awareness was at least partly achieved. Of course, it could be criticized that just people who are already interested in the topic would come to such a workshop and that is surely true. But even taking this into account, the workshop did at least encourage people to continue to reflect critically upon research and engineering—activities they might also engage with in the future. And it helped to bring people from different backgrounds together to talk about this topic. Of course, the workshop could have been improved. There was a small inconvenience with a projector and I could have given more references to or concepts from the literature. But regarding what can be expected from a workshop, which lasts just 1.5 hours, the results and the feedback seem satisfying.


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