2026 ASEE Annual Conference
Building Ethical Resilience
The Role of Metacognitive Approaches in Engineering Ethics:
Insights from an NSF ECR ER2 Project
Dr. Robert Bruce Thompson (University of Southern Maine), Ross Hickey (University of Southern Maine), and Carol Nemeroff (University of New Brunswick)
Traditional Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training in engineering often focuses on rules and regulations, yet the literature suggests these approaches are frequently insufficient to prevent misconduct when students face real-world pressures. A critical, often unaddressed, factor is a student's individual capacity for metacognition, the ability to mindfully self-reflect and critically evaluate one's own thought processes. This project addresses this gap by investigating a core premise: that baseline differences in metacognitive abilities are a significant predictor of the advanced moral cognition necessary for ethical resilience. The work aims to transform STEM ethics education by integrating psychological principles of metacognition into RCR training.
This poster presentation reports on Year 2 findings from our project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Education and Human Resources Core (ECR) Research Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) Project (Award #2316101). Our major activities include developing and implementing a decision-making model. This model guides our Metacognitive Ethics training, which combines case scenarios with foundational education in the cognitive neuroscience of ethical decision-making for undergraduate students. Over the past year, we have recruited 319 students for pre-assessment and 116 for post-assessment across four distinct groups, with each group receiving a different level of ethics intervention ranging from no training to our specialized course. The assessment battery includes instruments to measure self-regulation (Applied Mindfulness Process Scale), executive function (BRIEF-A), and metacognitive awareness (Metacognitive Awareness Inventory). Ethical reasoning was evaluated using case scenarios adapted from the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT) designed to map onto Kohlberg’s developmental levels of moral reasoning.
While a preliminary analysis of an initial cohort of 60 undergraduate STEM students confirmed our main hypothesis, this presentation will share the comprehensive results from the full cohort of all recruited participants. The initial findings demonstrated that metacognitive self-regulation is a significant predictor of advanced, post-conventional ethical reasoning, particularly the ability to objectively evaluate the validity of one's own thought processes ("decentration"). In contrast, socio-demographic variables did not correlate with ethical reasoning levels. The full analysis to be presented will build upon these initial results, offering a more robust examination of the link between metacognitive skills and the capacity to evaluate complex ethical issues, suggesting that engineering ethics training could be significantly enhanced by incorporating curricula designed to develop these specific cognitive domains.
Note from ASEE:
The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026
This poster presentation reports on Year 2 findings from our project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Education and Human Resources Core (ECR) Research Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) Project (Award #2316101). Our major activities include developing and implementing a decision-making model. This model guides our Metacognitive Ethics training, which combines case scenarios with foundational education in the cognitive neuroscience of ethical decision-making for undergraduate students. Over the past year, we have recruited 319 students for pre-assessment and 116 for post-assessment across four distinct groups, with each group receiving a different level of ethics intervention ranging from no training to our specialized course. The assessment battery includes instruments to measure self-regulation (Applied Mindfulness Process Scale), executive function (BRIEF-A), and metacognitive awareness (Metacognitive Awareness Inventory). Ethical reasoning was evaluated using case scenarios adapted from the Engineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT) designed to map onto Kohlberg’s developmental levels of moral reasoning.
While a preliminary analysis of an initial cohort of 60 undergraduate STEM students confirmed our main hypothesis, this presentation will share the comprehensive results from the full cohort of all recruited participants. The initial findings demonstrated that metacognitive self-regulation is a significant predictor of advanced, post-conventional ethical reasoning, particularly the ability to objectively evaluate the validity of one's own thought processes ("decentration"). In contrast, socio-demographic variables did not correlate with ethical reasoning levels. The full analysis to be presented will build upon these initial results, offering a more robust examination of the link between metacognitive skills and the capacity to evaluate complex ethical issues, suggesting that engineering ethics training could be significantly enhanced by incorporating curricula designed to develop these specific cognitive domains.
Note from ASEE:
The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026
