Film as Ethical Experience in Engineering Education: Three Modes of Ethical Engagement

Abstract Engineering ethics education has often been criticized for relying heavily on abstract principles, professional codes, and decontextualized case studies, which can limit students’ emotional and imaginative engagement with ethical issues. This study examines how engineering students articulate different aspects of ethical engagement after participating in a scaffolded film-based teaching intervention. The intervention was implemented in a master’s-level course at a Swedish university, where students watched Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises (2013) and produced written reflections on ethical issues raised by the film. The analysis draws on 76 student reflections and follows a qualitative, abductive approach presented using a Gioia-inspired data structure. Theoretically, the study combines perspectives from engineering ethics education with the concept of cinematic ethics, which emphasizes identification with fictional characters, reflection on moral emotions, and the aesthetic expansion of moral imagination. The findings reveal three interwoven modes of ethical engagement through which students interpreted the film: professional responsibility, identification and moral emotion, and aesthetic mediation of ethical imagination. The study highlights these interwoven modes of ethical engagement, stressing the need for engineering ethics education to be aware of, respond to, and utilize different modes, including aesthetic mediation. Furthermore, it reflects on learner positions in arts-based pedagogies, stressing the potential of the viewer position for stimulating ethical reflection. Finally, it reminds educators of the importance of a scaffolded pedagogical setting for film-based pedagogy.