Complete thesis - Murdoch University

Figure 5.5: Education for RE – Action Research Cycle 1• what is said about how software development, specifically RE and early design, tasksare carried out• what does the literature of learning say about modelling practitioners?Practitioners indicated an apprenticeship model of on-the-job learning. As an example, anumber of participants in the Macauley and Mylopoulos (1995a) study, asked what additionaltraining in RE would be given to a new graduate, expressed doubts as to whether this wasa job for a new graduate, who would take 12 to 18 months to be able to be ‘effective in thejob’. ‘Expert shadowing’ and ‘novice participation’ were among the techniques described toachieve this. The education literature pointed to situated learning, based on constructivistprinciples as an approach to provide an ‘authentic’ learning environment. This literature isdiscussed in Chapters 2 and 3. The literature of engineering education suggested a mismatchbetween teaching and learning, so that the effectiveness of student learning was compromised.A discussion of this literature in relation to the Murdoch context is provided in AppendixA, and in the description of the student cohort participating in each cycle of this ActionResearch project.Reflection on this literature led to the development of the plan for Cycle 1, including implementationand strategies for its evaluation. In this cycle the intervention design is based on222