Complete thesis - Murdoch University

1999). In addition, domains regarded as second order (in which practitioners work withconcepts that are already abstracted to a greater or lesser degree) are seen to be moredifficult to grasp and greater emphasis on cognitive skills is required (Patel et al, 1999).This is confirmed by the work of Laurillard (1993), which emphasises the distinction betweenfirst and second order learning (the former through experience, the latter through reflectionon experience and therefore a change in the perception of that experience). Second orderlearning relies heavily on and is assessed by means of symbolic representation, which requiresinterpretation.These criteria suggest RE is a second order task-oriented domain, implying emphasis oncognitive skills, and suggest acquisition, manipulation and organisation (and hence learningas transformation) are inherent characteristics of knowledge construction.3.4.1 Traditional learning and REWe can identify two characteristics of formal education for Requirements Engineering:• it adheres to a normative professional education model which sees science as the rationalfoundation for practice• it is based on texts that mirror a positivist worldview and present the domain assmoothly evolutionary.Waks (2001) suggests that the crisis of the professions arises because real-life problems do notpresent themselves neatly as cases to which scientific generalisations apply. Learning thatstresses the retrieval of organised packets of knowledge, or schemas from memory to augmentproblem solving is inadequate – ill-structured knowledge domains often render theseinappropriate. Rather, an appropriate ensemble of information suited to the particular understandingor problem-solving at hand must be assembled. Thus the knowledge is doublyconstructed – understanding is constructed using prior knowledge which itself is constructedon a case-by-case basis. Effective professional education calls for attention to both subjectmatter knowledge and general skills (Simon, 1980).Introductory, tertiary level texts portray the RE process as smoothly incremental. As discussedearlier (see Section 2.5.1), these texts form the basis of undergraduate education, andtherefore propose, implicitly, a learning behaviour that models the accepted (as opposed toactual) behaviour of professional Requirements Engineers.Accepting a smoothly incremental or evolutionary approach to the RE process equates wellwith traditional learning theories. In their simplest form these state that learning outcomes147