Pedagogical Challenges for Nanotechnology Education: Getting Science and Engineering Students to Examine Societal and Ethical Issues

There is a critical need for effective instructional methods that help future scientists and engineers participate in resolving societal and ethical issues brought about by innovation. This paper reports on the results of a multi-disciplinary, project-based instructional approach for college-level science and engineering students that integrated nanotechnology content-learning with the practical, social and ethical problems of nanotechnology application. Using a mixed method, pre- and post-instruction design the study examined students' perspectives and reasoning about the societal effects of nanotechnology discoveries. The results indicated that students had a cautiously optimistic attitude and that they maintained this position throughout the course. However, their reasoning for their attitudes noticeably changed after instruction. The detailed reasoning-analysis revealed students' deep-seated beliefs about the societal effects of nanotechnology discoveries. It also indicated the effectiveness of our instructional method to help students critically examine these prior beliefs and orientations. In specific, the findings indicate the need to consider quantitative and qualitative indicators of attitude about the social effects of scientific and engineering innovation in order to prepare students for the 21st century workforce. These findings guide our refinement of the instructional approach and can be informative for colleagues planning similar interventions in their curricular offerings.