Phenomenological Regretative Perspective

These objectives fall into a quantitative and interpretative perspective [19]. The framework in the phenomenological interpretative perspective is associated with the guidance that underpins the research and the object of analysis and not only with the specificity of the methods.

Thus, in the present research, which aims to listen to the students’ voice in order to investigate their perspectives about the inclusion of ethics and civic education in the engineering course curriculum, a volunteer student group belonging to engineering courses that do not include ethics education in their curriculum was interviewed.

The study included ethics training and a debate, allowing students a better mastery of the topic in question, so that students aren't

Fig. 2. Results and its analysis

2.1 The students' conception of engineering´s action in society

Before the training, students responded to a survey aimed at finding out their perspective on: the engineering action in contemporary society, positive and negative contributions, and about the most important values in the performance of the engineering profession.

Relative to the most important values for the practice of the engineering profession, Figure 1 shows the results in the categories identified in the responses.

Fig. 3. The most important values in the exercise of the engineering profession as per students'

From their answers 13 categories were identified which are shown in Figure 3.

Fig. 5. In the students' opinion, what is the worst impact/influence that engineering has on society?

The response of 43.5% of the students referred to the worst impact, as being pollution, followed by armament (17.4%) and 13% of the choices were social dependence on technology, the dehumanization of society and an incentive to greed. It should also be noted that 8.7% of students reported that Engineering has no impact or negative influence on society. One of the answers absolves engineering of any wrongdoing: "the worst impact is not created by engineering, but by the people who channel their knowledge to harm humanity".Another answer shows a more complex association between different levels of impacts that interrelate: "I think engineering leads to evolution, which awakens the consumerism and ultimately creates inequality, because the developments are always more accessible to social groups with higher purchasing power; and more and more people tend to think of evolution as a way to get rich and not to help others