Teaching Ethics of Technology in Swedish Secondary Education

Abstract

Recently, there have been renewed calls for developing ethical awareness and judgement among young technologist and designers, not least in relation to societal unsustainability and rapid development of artificial intelligence. While there is a burgeoning literature on ethics as a topic of instruction in engineering education, suggesting that its status is contested, little empirical work have investigated how ethics is taught and understood at the level of secondary technology education.

This paper reports on interviews with 11 technology teachers in secondary education in Sweden, where ethics of technology is an explicit albeit small part of the technology curriculum. Drawing on practice theory, the study unveils characteristic purposes, sayings, doings and relatings of ethics teaching, embedded in the architecture of a broader technology education practice.

Findings suggest that teaching ethics of technology is a predominantly implicit endeavour, and that fragments of ethics teaching is embedded in three more prominent projects: 1) developing technological-analytical capacities, 2) developing socio-technical understanding and awareness, and 3) developing responsibility, agency and openness. The teachers’ commitment to fostering responsible users and developers of technology suggest that ethics of technology in certain respects may be better positioned in the secondary curriculum as compared to higher engineering education. At the same time, the teachers express significant challenges, concerning for instance motivating student to engage sincerely and making space for open-ended discussions in a crowded curriculum.