CONTEXT/BACKGROUND There is an urgent need for 21st century education to be able to address the complex problems of the climate crisis and questions of technological development (Anthropocene). A radical new approach is required, and we believe that teaching Ethics and Ecology in Technological Education will provide students with the right set of skills and competences to tackle the problems of climate change through sustainable technological development.The consortium consists of 8 partners all of who are members of the European Culture and Technology Lab+ which is part of the European University of Technology Initiative. Ethics is this context needs to be understood as a form of praxis, an individual practice which has collective implications, the ethical relation to the other has now come to the fore through as a worldwide pandemic of COVID19. The reaction to COVID-19 has demonstrated when there is an urgency, an public health emergency, the individual can see beyond their own needs and can act locally and globally at the same time. It is the sum of micro-decisions which when brought together have global impact. The question that Greta Thunberg poses is ‘how dare you’ not react requires that the academic community does by ensuring that the question ethics and ecology are embedded within all programmes of Higher Education. In order to do so staff and students need to understand that the the ecological questions and the ethical question are one and the same, that there is a profound overlap between ethos and ecology. OBJECTIVES AND INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS Our objective is to design innovative, ethico-ecological education methods which are transferable to different disciplines in the Technological University, from Arts, Humanities and Social Science to design to Engineering and the Environmental sciences. This is accompanied by the development of an expanded understanding of technology, technology not simply as an application of science but techne as the mode through which we become human. In the long term, our objective is to transform technical or technological education to make it more sustainable for the individual and for society. . The project will result in the following Intellectual Outputs (IOs): • Ethico-Ecological Education Methods (IO1), to arrange multi-stakeholder collaboration and to encourage mutual comprehension; • A Code of Engagement for Collaboration (IO2), in order to ensure distributed collaboration processes and rapid technological transfer; • An Ethico-Ecological Teacher Training Programme for Technological Education (IO3), developed to train teachers how to teach the new ethico-ecological approach; • A modular Ethico-Ecological Student Programme (IO4), which consists of a set of 5 ECT (Level 8) modules which can be combined into a minor programme of 30 ECTS for ethico-ecological approach to technological education. ACTIVITIES We will organize 8 Transnational Project Meetings, two Intensive Study Programmes (ISPs), and one Multiplier Event (ME) within this project: • The transnational meetings will be attended by representatives from all partners and will be used to discuss organizational, financial and content related issues. • In both ISPs, over 50 students from different disciplines and organizations will participate. Students will be selected based on their interest in the ethico-ecological approach, their background in ethics and technology studies and their motivation to address societal issues and United Nations sustainable development goals. Teachers will be selected from •. Partner organizations will be selected for their background and interest in sustainable development. In addition, these societal stakeholders will be invited to join the ISPs. The ISPs are essential for scoping, testing, and iterative development of IO1 – IO4. • The ME will be the end international conference and will be organized in Sofia. It will be used for the dissemination of the project outcomes, outputs and results to existing and new stakeholders. IMPACT The project will have a clear impact on different levels: • Student will acquire new skills and develop competences which will enable them to use a nethico-ecological approach. They will be technologically responsible citizens and as such will be great employability skills for the future as work patterns shift (automatised) • Teaching staff learns how to implement the ethico-ecological approach in education and how to guide students and stakeholders in development of ethico-ecological projects. •. Participating non-academic partners and stakeholders will act as multipliers for industry helping to implement the ethico-ecological approach in society through public and private enterprise. They will serve as an interface between higher education and wider society.
We sought firstly to establish a team dedicated to collaborative work on the questions of ecology and ethics within the context of the EUt. Secondly, we sought to identify what ethical frameworks we could propose for technological education that take into account ecological thinking. Thirdly, we sought to establish a framework for understanding technology within the context of contemporary philosophy and ecology. Fourthly, we aimed to develop an understanding of ecology that sufficiently addresses contemporary discourse on post-humanism. The combination of these theoretical and ethical frameworks aimed to develop robust module descriptors as well as toolkits for the delivery of eco-ethical education to a wide variety of students and educators, bearing in mind their cultural and institutional differences. Informing this, we aimed to construct a state-of-the-art on the current discourse of ecological ethics in technological education and a Code of Conduct + Inclusivity Code that is free for others to use to regulate their interactions. Finally, we aimed to develop a series of case-studies that could be drawn on by other educators and two validated modules, the first aimed at teachers teachers, and the second student-focussed.
TUDublin, along with the seven other partners across the EUt, is a technological university that teaches a wide range of subjects, including the arts and humanities. The European Culture and Technology Laboratory (ECT Lab) was formed as a task of the EUt to ensure a representation of the arts and humanities within technological education. Ethico sought to address the need for a development of contemporary education to be more incorporative of trans-disciplinary eco-ethical pedagogies. To achieve this, we have developed teacher training and student modules that firstly, emphasise the idea of humans, and more than human others, becoming with techne. Secondly a shift away from environmentalism and towards ecological thinking and thirdly, a move from applied ethics towards virtue ethics and a notion of little ethics. Additionally, we applied to this project with the aim of developing a trans-disciplinary site of expertise within the ECT Lab, and a work team. Through the project of Ethico, we addressed not only the need for the development of eco-ethics, but the establishment of a team of colleagues across the eight partners who are able to advise broader the EUt to change ethics in third level education and continue to work together