Complete thesis - Murdoch University

to undertake these activities. In general terms, the approaches taken have subscribed to apositivist view of software development, and model scientific and engineering methodologies,with their focus on process and repeatability. Benson (2003) suggests this is true of the ISspecialisation as well as CS and SE, so that current IS curricula in practice (as opposed toemerging model curricula) continue to show a heavy dependency on positivist thinking.The competency assigned to RE-relevant elements is also influenced by ideological factors,and, in general, only foundational levels of competence (ie Bloom levels of knowledge, comprehensionand application) are considered appropriate for graduate attainment. Yet Leeand Truex (2000) suggests mature use of methods etc (we can generalise to categorise theseas profession-specific knowledge and skills) is based on the development/derivation of an individual‘methodology’ at an appropriate level of granularity and tailored to the profile ofthe context. Although this level of ‘mastery’ (Dreyfus, 2001) is ambitious for undergraduateeducation, as we will see in the next chapter, these processes, their granularity and, inparticular, the ability to adapt them, are an indication of higher order thinking, interrelatedwith cognitive complexity. This can be addressed in formal education.Other, non-technical skills are usually addressed at a more abstract level and often in associationwith ethics, management or social concern. Despite the effort placed in the developmentof engineering approaches to software development, the overwhelming determiner of softwareproduction productivity is personnel and team capability – up to twice as important as thenext highest productivity factor (Boehm, 1981). This finding, supported by practitionerstudies, suggest non-technical elements should be dominant (or at least be equally considered)within a formal education environment. However, Lowry and Turner (2005) suggestthat tradition and inertia act as some of the formidable barriers to substantive revisions tocurricula in line with the findings of practitioner-based studies.Therefore, while profession-specific knowledge and skills and their initial competence aregenerally considered in model curricula, though perhaps not to an appropriate level, howuseful the knowledge generally included in tertiary institution curricula is for the practicalitiesof being a professional RE can be questioned. Practitioners emphasise attributes other thantechnical skills – among others, both Bentley et al (1999) (personal attributes) and Scottand Wilson (2002) (stance) develop models which address these affective (as opposed tocognitive) qualities in practitioners. The importance of the most obvious of these, personaland interpersonal communications is also confirmed in the literature of expertise: it acts asthe vehicle by which experience and expertise is transferred from expert to novice, as well asshared among the community of experts. This and other learning models is further examinedin Chapter 3.98