Ethics of care in engineering education: A critical synthesis of meanings and evidence

Abstract

Background

Care ethics has gained visibility in engineering education, but the literature remains conceptually diffuse and methodologically uneven. As a result, it is unclear what researchers mean by “care,” how they translate it into educational practice, and what kinds of claims the existing evidence can currently support.

Purpose

This preregistered synthesis critically examines how care ethics is conceptualized, implemented, and evidenced in engineering education.

Scope/Method

Database searches and citation tracing identified 53 sources published between 1997 and 2025 that explicitly engaged care ethics in engineering education contexts. Extracted data covered conceptual framings, educational settings and formats, study designs, data sources, outcomes, implementation issues, and implications for engineering education.

Results

The corpus comprised 23 nonempirical and 30 empirical, predominantly qualitative, sources. We identified four conceptual strands: (i) care as a way of teaching and conditions for ethical agency, (ii) care ethics as a normative theory for guiding sociotechnical judgment, (iii) care ethics as accountable community engagement, and (iv) care ethics as politics of care work and institutional responsibility. Tronto's care phases predominate across strands, shaping how care is translated into engineering education practice. Across strands, the most consistent pattern was a format–evidence mismatch: common course formats and proxies make attentiveness and responsibility comparatively visible, while competent care, responsiveness, and solidarity are rarely designed for, observed, or measured.

Conclusion

The central finding is that the field is comparatively strong in specifying what care should mean in engineering education but less consistent in generating evidence of how it unfolds in practice.