Belief, Attitude, and Intention towards Creative Industries Ethics Education among Educators

Balakrishnan, Balamuralithara; Tochinai, Fumihiko; Kanemitsu, Hidekazu; Wong Abdullah, Muhammad Fadhil; Indartono, Setyabudi

doi:https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/5810331

Education Research International

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Abstract Introduction Results Discussion Conclusion Data Availability Conflicts of Interest Acknowledgments References Copyright Related Articles

Research Article | Open Access

Volume 2022 | Article ID 5810331 | https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/5810331

Belief, Attitude, and Intention towards Creative Industries Ethics Education among Educators

Balamuralithara Balakrishnan,¹Fumihiko Tochinai,²Hidekazu Kanemitsu,²Muhammad Fadhil Wong Abdullah,¹and Setyabudi Indartono³

Academic Editor: Harco Leslie Hendric Spits Warnars

Received17 Dec 2021

Revised27 Jan 2022

Accepted24 Feb 2022

Published11 Mar 2022

Abstract

Recently, many ethical issues have emerged in creative industries (CI). Therefore, it is necessary to examine how ethics is taught in higher education institutions (HEIs) among future CI professionals. The educators who teach ethics to these future professionals play a key role in disseminating and instilling the knowledge, skills, and values of ethics; thus, their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics are important in measuring the effectiveness of the ethics education practised in the CI programmes at their respective institutions. This research gauged the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators in Malaysian HEIs. The investigation was conducted with 54 ethics educators who taught CI ethics subjects. The research method utilised was a survey in which the respondents were sent a questionnaire to obtain the relevant data, and then both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed on the collected data. The results of the analyses showed that the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among the respondents were on the low side, with the recorded mean values ranging from 2.016 (SD = 0.135) to 3.512 (SD = 0.023), except for the beliefs and attitudes towards ethics education regarding environmental issues, which recorded mean values higher than 4.073 (SD = 0.066). The findings also revealed that the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education were significantly correlated. Additionally, practical strategies were proposed to build and develop positive beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators to educate and produce future CI professionals who are ethical and possess a sense of responsibility.

1. Introduction

Creative industries (CI) are one of the important sectors for a nation’s economic development, particularly with the world moving towards a knowledge-based economy. This sector represents industries that utilise skills and talents to create economic, social, cultural, and environmental value [1]. CI domains usually include various sectors related to creativity and innovation, such as media communication, fashion, animation, tourism, and electronic media.

The professionals who are involved in this career path mainly utilise their creativity skills to innovate. These new creative innovations should have a long-term vision that considers the impact of these innovations on mankind and the environment [2]. The new ideas generated should consider social, environmental, and economic sustainability issues.

To inspire this sense of responsibility among CI practitioners in their creative outputs, ethics plays a significant role in instilling and inculcating the spirit to act responsibly towards protecting the well-being of mankind and the environment while considering sustainability issues [3, 4]. Felton et al. [5] stated that moral theory in ethics, which involves the concepts of both right and wrong, drives individuals to apply these concepts in their decision-making processes.

In the CI sector, ethics have been instrumental in defining the role and responsibility of designers, extending the function of the designer beyond the context of creativity, aesthetics, and product design to include responsibility towards society and the biosphere [6]. Thus, ethics education is vital for fostering ethical values among future CI professionals.

Ethics is becoming a vital issue in the CI fraternity, as recent findings indicate that there are many ethical issues that directly involve CI professionals and the industry itself. Ethical issues pertaining to copyright, patent, plagiarism, and other ethics-related matters need serious consideration from all related stakeholders who are involved in CI sectors [7–9]. Ruttonsha [10] mentioned that the application of creativity could create certain ethical issues, as CI professionals tend to think and behave in their own way without considering the ethical elements that they must adhere to in order to ensure their creative innovations, inventions, and creations have the necessary ethical values. Furthermore, in creative practices, ethical values are important in ascertaining the integrity of CI professionals, who must abide by the laws and codes of conduct outlined by authorities. Hence, the ethical issues that arise in CI can be overcome effectively.

Ethics education plays a pivotal role in equipping future CI practitioners with the fundamental knowledge, skills, and, most importantly, values that enable them to face and solve ethical issues in the creative design field. Therefore, ethics education can facilitate and guide CI undergraduates to make ethical decisions in their creative design processes.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) that offer CI programmes should strive to develop future CI professionals who possess ethical characteristics and values, developing CI experts who can serve with integrity and responsibility. Hence, CI ethics education should be in place for disseminating the knowledge, skills, and values of ethics among CI undergraduates.

In Malaysia, ethics is one of the core elements in CI programme outcomes, according to the Programme Standard for Creative Industries Undergraduate Programmes provided by the Malaysian Qualification and Accreditation Agency, which is responsible for accrediting the programmes offered in Malaysian HEIs [11]. Ethics must be introduced to undergraduates via ethics-related courses, as the educators who teach ethics play a pivotal role in preaching CI ethics and its fundamental concepts to future CI professionals [12].

According to Bouwer et al. [13], the educator is a vital agent in ethics education, and ethics educators must contribute towards realising the importance of ethics and its values among learners. For ethics educators to educate CI undergraduates with the appropriate knowledge, skills, and values of CI ethics, it is pivotal for the educators to have the right beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education [14, 15]. These elements—beliefs, attitudes, and intentions—determine the success of the teaching process, particularly for ethics education, which is largely a learning domain that focuses on character and values development among learners [15], as the positive beliefs, appropriate attitudes, and good intentions towards ethics education among educators can produce conducive teaching and learning processes in ethics classrooms. Furthermore, ethics educators’ commitment to preparing future CI professionals to be ethical and responsible is questionable [16]; thus, understanding ethics educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education could shed light on this issue.

The effectiveness of ethics education in CI programmes in HEIs is determined not only by the pedagogical aspects but also by how educators perceive ethics education [13]. An individual’s perceptions of and actions towards certain issues are largely dominated by their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions [17]. Therefore, it is vital to determine the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the ethics educators who teach future CI professionals. This knowledge may provide new insights into their perspectives towards ethics education, helping determine the effectiveness of the ethics education preached in ethics classrooms. Furthermore, the investigation of beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among ethics educators, particularly for CI programmes, is not a well-researched area.

In this study, we conducted an investigation to gauge the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators. Educators from seven HEIs in Malaysia who taught CI ethics course(s) were recruited as the study sample.

The outcomes of this investigation could serve as a cornerstone for ethics education in CI programmes, specifically in understanding the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators, perhaps facilitating them in developing their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education.

The literature review pertaining to the study will be followed in the next section that is followed by the methodology, results, discussions, recommendations, and finally conclusions.

2. CI Ethics Education and the Role of Ethics Educators

In this section, the review will focus on introducing CI, the need for ethics education in CI programmes in HEIs, and the role of ethics educators.

CI represents a growing and important economic sector that contributed approximately 2% of the total Malaysian gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 [18]. The CI sector largely comprises intellectual properties (IP), designs, and creative contents that have been developed via creative action and innovation [19]. Thus, since the contributions of CI towards social development are becoming more prevalent, the professionals who are engaged in this industry must be more responsible and ethical towards society and the environment. Furthermore, CI professionals must be able to make the necessary ethical decisions in their daily work activities.

The creative designs and innovations created by CI professionals must follow the ethical procedures outlined by professional bodies and related agencies and must have a long-term vision that considers the impact on society’s well-being, both locally and globally. In the idea creation process, CI professionals must always consider possible consequences, and ethics can help guide them in making decisions driven by the core values of morality [13].

Producing ethical and responsible CI professionals begins at HEIs, where undergraduates must be educated and instilled with appropriate knowledge, skills, and values via ethics education.

Ethics education not only educates future professionals regarding what is right and wrong from the framework of moral values [6] but also expands the dimensions of ethical values and decision-making concerning sustainability issues, the impact of technology, culture, gender, and other ethics-related elements [20]. Furthermore, ethics in the creative design sector concentrates on the interaction between the product and creative innovations and their effects on mankind and the biosphere [6]. CI professionals must consider these issues to contribute towards sustainable development and fulfil the needs of current and future generations via their creative design innovations. Thus, it is vital that CI professionals view their creative innovations from an ethical point of view. Felton et al. [5] pointed out that ethics in the creative design sector is considered performative ethics since it requires professionals to make and evaluate every decision during their design process from an ethical perspective.

HIEs play a pivotal role in educating and developing future CI professionals by instituting a proper and effective ethics education paradigm. Educators are the key agents who will determine the ethical knowledge, skills, and values attained by students [21].

Ethics education in creative industry programmes in Malaysian HEIs is carried out in many forms. Based on the analysis of the programme structure of several established institutions that offer creative industry programmes, we found that ethics were preached via a dedicated subject that focused on ethics in the CI sector and/or through subjects that contain ethics-related topics. In the dedicated CI ethics subject, topics related to theories of ethics, ethical considerations in the industry, and ethical decision-making processes are taught to students. In ethics-related courses, ethical elements related to CI have been infused in those subjects focusing on law, technical, and nontechnical topics.

Chen et al. [22] found that educators with the appropriate intention towards a subject matter may go the extra mile in educating students by demonstrating high motivation, creativity, and effective pedagogical strategies. According to Adkins and Radtke [23], educators who perceive their role as delivering only the fundamental knowledge of ethics may not be able to view ethics education as an essential subject matter. Frank et al. [24] found that not all ethics educators are knowledgeable and have the right attitude and interest in ethics, noting that many of the educators were uncertain and lacked exposure to the fundamental concept of ethics. Ethics educators in CI programmes should be aware of their responsibility and commitment to serve as a useful resource for learners to gain the necessary knowledge, skills, and values of ethics.

Ethics educators not only play the function of disseminators of ethical knowledge, skills, and values among future CI professionals but also play an important role in enhancing awareness of ethical issues, ethical reasoning, and judgement capabilities; stimulating moral imagination; and facilitating the learners to become aware of their own ethical characteristics that they could apply when facing ethical dilemmas in the creative design process [6, 13]. With these important responsibilities, ethics educators must focus on strengthening and increasing the ethical practicality among future CI professionals, thus developing their ethical characteristics. First and foremost, CI ethics educators must possess the right beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education to bring an effective ethics education paradigm to ethics classrooms and fulfil the agenda of ethics education.

3. Methodology

Attitudes, beliefs, and intentions are interlinked through the value expectancy model, which claims that an individual’s beliefs prompt the development of attitudes that will influence the individual’s intentions to take action [25]. Belief dominates the part of an individual’s values, mindset, and conviction that can be developed via knowledge, culture, and environment [26, 27]. Watling and Zhou [28] stated that belief influences attitude; attitude is the expression of an individual’s belief performed through actions and views [29–31]. According to Searle and Willis [32], the intention is the state of mind that drives an individual’s current and future actions.

The application of the value expectancy model in the context of this study concentrated on obtaining information about the ethics educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education that may influence them in the CI ethics teaching process.

The study was conducted based on the following research questions:(a)What are the levels of belief, attitude, and intention towards ethics education among CI ethics educators?(b)What is the relationship between belief, attitude, and intention towards ethics education among CI ethics educators?

Figure 1 shows the research model used in this investigation.

The survey items were based on Balakrishnan et al. [3, 33], who derived their work from the study of Leiserowitz et al. [34] that assessed the level of belief, attitude, and intention in the context of ethics education related to CI. The survey items were modified and revised accordingly to achieve the aim of this study, which was to gauge the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators. Part A measured the respondents’ beliefs about teaching and transferring the required knowledge and skills of ethics to their respective students. Part B mainly concentrated on assessing the attitudes among ethics educators towards ethics and the ethics education preached in the classroom. Part C gauged the intention of the study participants to apply the necessary practices in ethics education and educating students in the classroom.

This study used a five-point Likert scale, where 1 represented strongly disagree and 5 represented strongly agree.

Three CI ethics education experts (two from Malaysia and one from Indonesia) who possess more than 14 years of experience in teaching and creating curricula for CI ethics validated the survey. All three experts approved each of the items in parts A, B, and C of the questionnaire.

A pilot study was conducted at University M and University N—both located in Malaysia—to obtain the reliability values of the questionnaire. A total of 12 respondents—CI ethics educators—were involved in this pilot study. A stratified sampling process was used, with the selection criterion being that the participants had to be teaching a subject(s) related to CI ethics. The reliability coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) obtained for parts A, B, and C were 0.713, 0.802, and 0.782, respectively.

The Cronbach’s alpha values for the items of part A ranged from 0.702 to 0.724; for part B, the values ranged from 0.745 to 0.822; and for part C, the values ranged from 0.737 to 0.814. These values indicate that all the items were reliable.

The study participants were selected from seven Malaysian HEIs that offer various programmes in the CI area. The programmes offered were as follows:(i)Animation(ii)Advertising(iii)Games design(iv)Multimedia technology(v)Film technology

In this study, we assessed the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among educators who taught the ethics subject(s) in CI programmes. The study also examined the correlation between (i) beliefs and attitudes and (ii) attitudes and intentions towards ethics education among the study respondents.

The research objectives were as follows: RO1: to measure the beliefs of ethics educators towards ethics education among CI ethics educators RO2: to assess the attitudes of ethics educators towards ethics education among CI ethics educators RO3: to gauge the intentions of ethics educators towards ethics education among CI ethics educators RO4: to measure the relationship between beliefs and attitudes towards ethics education among CI ethics educators RO5: to measure the correlation between attitudes and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators RO6: to measure the correlation between beliefs and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators

The survey was administered to 54 educators from 7 HEIs in Malaysia. The respondents were recruited via a stratified sampling process whereby the criteria for the selection were that the participants had to be teaching subject(s) related to CI ethics during the study period. The subject(s) taught by the participants had to be either a dedicated subject on ethics or subject(s) that contained the element of CI ethics.

The questionnaire was distributed via e-mail to the participants during the semester in which they taught a CI ethics-related course(s). No monetary element was provided for participation in the study, and the educators were given three weeks to respond to the questionnaire. The administrators of the participating institutions facilitated the recruitment process with their commitments and cooperation.

The data collected were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) for descriptive—mean and standard deviation—and correlation analysis.

4. Results

The obtained data were analysed using SPSS. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) for parts A, B, and C were 0.815, 0.811, and 0.807, respectively, which were deemed reliable [35]. In addition, a series of Shapiro–Wilk tests was conducted, and the results indicated that the data were normally distributed. Thus, we used parametric tests to analyse the correlation—Pearson correlation tests—for research objectives RO4 and RO5.

Table 1 depicts the mean values and standard deviations for parts A, B, and C of the data recorded from the respondents, while Table 2 shows the Pearson correlation values obtained for research objectives RO4 and RO5.

The mean values and standard deviations depicted in Table 1 were obtained using the equations as follows:where N is the number of responses for each scale and N_total is the total number of respondents.where N is the number of responses for each scale. For the Pearson correlation illustrated in Table 2, the following formula was used:where r = correlation coefficient, x_i = values of x variable in a sample, y_i = values of y variable in a sample, x′ = mean values of the x variable, and y′ = mean values of the y variable.

Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 23 (SPSS) was used to obtain mean values, standard deviation, and Pearson correlation coefficient. The values were obtained through simulation of the data (responses from the questionnaire) that were processed in the software.

For the first research objective (RO1), which concerned the respondents’ beliefs towards ethics education, the mean score for items A1 to A6 (Table 1) ranged from 2.517 (SD = 0.213) to 4.073 (SD = 0.066). High mean scores above 4.055 were recorded for items A2 and A6, which assessed beliefs about the importance of environmental issues and sustainability in the context of CI ethics education among the respondents. The items that gauged responsibility and accountability (items A3 and A4) recorded low mean values below 2.721.

The second research objective (RO2) dealt with ethics educators’ attitudes towards ethics education. As illustrated in Table 1, the mean scores for items B1 to B7 ranged from 2.016 (SD = 0.135) to 4.153 (SD = 0.112). Item B4 gauged the respondents’ beliefs about environmental sustainability via ethics education and recorded a high mean score of 4.153. However, item B3, which assessed the impact of ethics on economic issues, recorded a low mean score of 2.016.

For the third research objective (RO3), which assessed intentions towards CI ethics education among respondents, items C1 to C6 recorded means scores that ranged from 2.018 (SD = 0.072) to 3.512 (SD = 0.023). All the items recorded relatively moderate and low mean scores, particularly item C1, which gauged the respondents’ intentions to teach in institutions that give importance to ethics education and recorded a low mean score of 2.018.

For the fourth research objective (RO4), the relationship between beliefs and attitudes towards CI ethics education among the respondents was analysed. Table 2 shows that the respondents’ beliefs in CI ethics education had a strong and significant correlation with their attitudes towards CI ethics education. The Pearson correlation values were more than 0.682 (two-tailed) with a significance level of < 0.05. This shows that the relationship between beliefs and attitudes towards CI ethics education among the respondents was strongly related.

Table 2 also shows that the respondents’ attitudes towards CI ethics education (RO5) had a strong and significant correlation with their intentions towards ethics education. The computed Pearson correlation values exceeded the significance threshold ( < 0.05) at 0.702 (two-tailed).

The final research objective (RO6), which measured the relationship between the respondents’ beliefs and intentions towards CI ethics education, revealed that the respondents’ beliefs towards CI ethics education had a strong and significant relationship with their intentions towards CI ethics education. The Pearson correlation values were more than 0.684 (two-tailed) with a significance level of < 0.05.

The correlation values shown in Table 2 indicate that beliefs mould attitudes and that attitudes determine the intentions of CI ethics educators towards ethics education. This aligns with the model of value expectancy developed by Azjen and Fishbein [25]; which promulgates that beliefs, attitudes, and intentions are interlinked factors that determine an individual’s motivation and action to achieve something.

The overall findings (Table 1) showed that the respondents’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education were not promising, except for their beliefs and attitudes towards environmental issues in the context of ethics education. This finding was also strengthened by the correlation values, as depicted in Table 2, illustrating that beliefs, attitudes, and intentions were significantly correlated.

5. Discussion

Referring to the outcomes of the study, it is important to note that the driving factors—the educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions—to bring an effective ethics education to classrooms is lacking among the respondents in the investigated institutions. However, the respondents’ beliefs and attitudes towards the environment in ethics education were promising. This shows that ethics educators have a positive obligation to perform the necessary actions to address ethical environmental issues. This may be attributed to environmental issues being widely discussed on various platforms. Hence, the CI ethics educators involved in this study may have had good exposure to the problem and have been able to appreciate the importance of environmental issues in daily life, which positively affected their attitudes and beliefs towards CI ethics education in the context of environmental issues [36, 37].

As shown in Table 1, the outcomes of the study indicated that the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of CI ethics educators towards other elements besides environmental issues were not encouraging. Malik et al. [38] mentioned that educators’ attitudes on the importance of ethics education highly depend on their stand and commitments in teaching the concepts of ethics to students. As shown in Table 1, the recorded mean values indicate that their beliefs, particularly in the context of creating a conducive environment for teaching, were very low. This clearly indicates that the CI ethics educators who participated in this study need to enhance their dedication to advancing CI ethics education to the next level. This will ensure that students receive the appropriate knowledge, skills, and values of CI ethics.

According to van Stekelenburg et al. [39], educators’ attitudes on ethics educational issues may influence their overall perception of the value of ethics, and the findings of this study, as shown in Tables 1 and 2, indicate that beliefs, attitudes, and intentions are interlinked in determining the overall perception of CI ethics education among the educators in this study.

Polmear et al. [40] also found that educators who are less motivated to teach ethics course(s) may perceive ethics education as a less important subject matter compared to other subjects. Therefore, it is important for ethics educators to possess positive beliefs, appropriate attitudes, and strong intentions towards ethics education to bring meaningful teaching and learning processes to CI ethics subject(s). Furthermore, this will help educators go the extra mile in crafting effective pedagogical strategies that will improve the learning outcomes of ethics education.

In summary, the findings of this study revealed that CI ethics educators should enhance their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education since these three components play a pivotal role in building the proper motivation and shaping the appropriate mindset among educators to effectively preach ethics education to learners. The absence of the necessary quantum of beliefs, attitudes, and intentions among ethics educators towards ethics education yields negative impacts on the teaching process, which will directly affect students’ learning process and hinder their acquisition of knowledge, skills, and ethical values. CI ethics educators having positive beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education are important in achieving the aim of ethics education to build and produce ethical and responsible future CI professionals who possess the proper ethical values, demonstrate a sense of responsibility, and are capable of protecting the well-being of all through their creative inventions and creations. This will also ensure that future CI professionals will adhere to the CI professional code of conduct and abide by the stated rules and laws in their daily professional activities.

6. Research Limitations

There were some limitations to this study, particularly in terms of the respondents’ honesty and their responses to questions about their beliefs, attitudes, and intentions regarding CI ethics education. It was assumed that the respondents to the study provided truthful responses, even though not all of the participants may have taken the survey seriously. Thus, the responses collected in this study may not accurately reflect the actual beliefs, attitudes, and intentions of the CI ethics educators regarding ethics education, as shown in Table 1.

Additionally, because the respondents who were chosen for the study taught various CI ethics-related subjects, their responses to each item on the questionnaire may have been influenced by their previous experiences.

7. Recommendations

In light of this study’s findings, we propose the following strategies to improve the beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators:

7.1. Ethics Development Training Programme

CI ethics educators must be well prepared to educate undergraduates of CI programmes. Therefore, a proper ethics development training programme may improve educators’ knowledge and skills to educate future CI professionals on ethics. The development training programme must consist of two key elements: (i) CI ethical concepts and (ii) effective pedagogical strategies to teach ethics. This may not only enhance CI ethics educators’ knowledge and teaching skills but also build their confidence to teach ethics course(s) effectively. According to Perloff [31], possessing increased knowledge of a subject matter can influence an individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and intentions; thus, a development training programme may facilitate moulding CI ethics educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education. At the same time, the training programme can act as a platform for CI ethics educators to explore different paradigms of ethical applications applied in real-world situations of creative content creation and innovation. This could lead the way for CI ethics educators to build and develop future CI professionals who are ethical and responsible towards society and the biosphere.

7.2. Engaging with CI Professional Bodies

Ethics educators should work hand in hand with CI professional bodies to engage with professionals and achieve better insights into the necessity and importance of ethics in creative design and innovation activities. CI professionals may actively participate in promoting the necessity of ethics to help ethics educators appreciate the role that ethics plays in industry practises. Collaboration between professionals and CI ethics educators may improve the motivation among educators to teach ethics effectively, and professionals may provide a new perspective on how they perceive the role of ethics in CI sectors [41]. Such activities will help build the appropriate beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics among CI ethics educators.

7.3. Engagement in Community Service

Community service in higher education institutions should not be limited to only the students but must be expanded to include educators, particularly ethics educators. Engaging in community service can develop a sense of responsibility towards mankind and the environment among ethics educators [42]. Participating in community service by utilising their expertise in solving community issues and problems could create a new dimension of social responsibility among CI ethics educators that goes beyond typical classrooms and design studios [5]. Community service carves a path for ethics educators to develop their ethical values via applying ethical norms in community service activities, which ultimately can build positive beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics.

8. Conclusion

This study has demonstrated that beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education among CI ethics educators are still lacking, except for the attitudes and beliefs related to environmental issues in the context of ethics education. Furthermore, this investigation revealed that ethics educators’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education are strongly interlinked.

The findings of the study show that HEIs that offer CI programmes must give serious attention and extra effort to building and developing appropriate beliefs, attitudes, and intentions among ethics educators to effectively deliver ethics education to undergraduates pursuing CI-related programmes. Effective teaching of ethics education is pivotal in producing ethical and responsible CI professionals who are ready to serve mankind and protect the environment.

Having positive beliefs, attitudes, and intentions towards ethics education is critical for CI ethics educators to achieve the goal of ethics education, which is to build and produce ethical and responsible future CI professionals who possess the proper ethical values, demonstrate a sense of responsibility, and are capable of protecting the well-being of all through their creative inventions and creations. This will also ensure that future CI professionals follow the code of conduct for CI professionals and abide by the stated rules and laws in their daily professional activities.

CI ethics educators, with support from their respective institutions, should develop strong beliefs, positive attitudes, and appropriate intentions towards ethics education. These educators should strive to develop their understanding of ethical concepts in CI, acquire the appropriate skills of ethics, and internalise ethical values to bring a proper ethics education paradigm into ethics classrooms to educate future CI professionals. A proper model that provides the appropriate information on ethics and improves CI educators’ skills in ethics teaching is necessary.

Future work can be done in the context of developing a proper training model for ethics educators that can foster the proper belief, attitude, and intention towards ethics education. At the same time, this research can be expanded in terms of understanding the motivation for teaching ethics among educators from various dimensions related to the ethics education teaching process.

Data Availability

All the data are included in the article.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This research has been carried out under the Fundamental Research Grants Scheme (FRGS/1/2019/SSI09/UPSI/02/3) provided by the Ministry of Higher Education of Malaysia. The authors would like to extend their gratitude to Sultan Idris Education University that helped manage the grant.

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Copyright © 2022 Balamuralithara Balakrishnan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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