Complete thesis - Murdoch University

same items of knowledge to be presented and learned in a variety of different ways andfor a variety of different purposes, at different levels of granularity.Progress is being made in understanding the way knowledge is structured and how expertsthink in specific disciplines. Donald (2002), in particular, represents higher-order thinkingin several disciplines to show how teachers and students perceive the learning process, whileothers links the scientific study of thinking and learning to classroom practices. Both approachesreach the conclusion that disciplines need to be more involved in the research onhow people think and how students learn. Donald (2002, p 299) states:There is a substantial convergence in the need for deeper understanding of thedisciplines. The continuing challenge is how to draw on the expertise of scholarsto improve post-secondary education.However, there is a dearth of literature examining the education of Requirements Engineers.Numerous studies examine the learning of specific technical skills (such as programming),while student performance in capstone projects, usually involving groupwork, is also an aspectof IT education that has had some exposure in the literature. Although several studies haveexamined the practice of software development in novices, this has rarely isolated the REprocess. In general, these studies look at IT student performance in problem-solving anddesign tasks as a mechanism for either comparing expert performance against novice (egstudies by Curtis et al (1987); Guindon (1990); Visser and Hoc (1990); Adelson and Soloway(1985)), or in order to isolate a characteristic of task performance (such as opportunism(Visser, 1990)). How the students learnt the skills to perform the task has rarely beendiscussed, while there appears to be no research published that addresses the specific REpractitioner concerns described here in an educational context.The approach taken for examining education for IT specialisations in general (and henceto some extent taking up this challenge) has been the revision of both the various modelcurricula which embrace aspects of education for software development (Engel and Roberts,2001; Gorgone et al, 2002a; LeBlanc and Sobel, 2004), and the Bodies of Knowledge whichunderpin them. While a Body of Knowledge for Requirements Engineering has not yet beenidentified and defined, some components are included in other BoKs and curriculum models.These texts describe Guiding Principles – the foundational ideas and beliefs that guidedtheir development, and the desired student outcomes for an undergraduate curriculum in theappropriate specialisation. This approach, and its effectiveness, are discussed in some detailin Chapters 2 and 3. In summary the guidelines could be described as overarching – theoutcomes discussed in terms of pedagogical strategies that support them. The quote belowis one example of this approach:8