How to address the volitional dimension of the engineer's social responsibility

In this paper the author argues that argue that volitional aspects in engineering action need to be addressed when teaching social responsibility within the engineering curriculum. After presenting reasons for this claim, the author looks at two different, but not mutually exclusive, approaches to address volitional aspects. First, the recent revival of virtue ethics can be applied in engineering ethics. The second way makes use of various processes, e.g. research, design, learning, negotiation, decision-making, and reconciliation as processes, as a forum for teaching. This approach can be used to indirectly reveal the functionality and dysfunctionality of different attitudes to the students. Practical didactic suggestions are presented.