The societal implications of technology developed through physics are not always
clear. Physicists need to use ethical reasoning skills to maneuver through morally
ambiguous situations. For this reason, curricula for physics students should also be
geared towards developing these skills. This thesis focuses on the effects of ethical
discussions in the physics classroom. I present an examination of physics students'
engagement in a unit about the development of the atomic bomb through a two-part
study where students interpret and apply an ethical framework to discussions about
the development of the atomic bomb and current STEM research. Using both student
written work and video-recordings of in-class discussions, I analyze how the
curriculum design may influence student learning. Study 1 uses students' written work
to understand how they interpret and apply an ethical framework to their discussions
about the development of the atomic bomb and to current STEM research. Our
analysis shows that students conflate certain ethical principles and/or avoid their
negative implications, which in turn leads to a misapplication of the principles.
However, students also demonstrate a range of productive approaches to applying
these ethical principles which contribute to the development of strong ethical
arguments. Study 2 uses video-recorded data of classroom interactions to understand
how ethical discussions can be supported in the classroom. Our analysis shows the
emergence of different group dynamics that seem to fall along a spectrum of
engagement modes. The emergent modes are defined by the extent to which
students share a collective sense of what is going on in their group and build on each
other's' ideas. From the analysis, I consider how cues from the professor and LAs, as
well as the availability of guiding prompts and other relevant curricular resources,
influence these dynamics. I also share possible implications of these findings for
instruction physics education researchers
