Complete thesis - Murdoch University

strategies on other units within SE. At this time changes proposed for Cycle 2 were preemptedand approved internally.Based on a report describing the findings of Cycle 1, funding was sought to resource theredevelopment required for Cycle 2. These were obtained from both the University TeachingLearning Centre (TLC) under their Innovative Teaching Development & Research Schemeand from the Division of Science and Engineering’s Teaching Quantum Funds. These specificallytarget innovations in teaching practice for wider dissemination within the Universityenvironment.This cycle was reported in the literature only as the background to future interventions.The Conference on Software Engineering Education & Training (CSEET) paper (Armarego,2002), however, preempted the PBL approach taken in the Requirements Engineering unit bydescribing a restructuring of a follow-on unit. This case study informed the work undertakenin the next cycle of the Action Research study. In this context, the CSEET paper (andthe feedback from reviewers and participants) addressed the need to expose the study toacademics and practitioners engaged in the discipline. Of particular interest, reviewers’suggested (on a 6-point Likert scale) that this work was very good to excellent in its likelihoodto be used and referenced by others, to influence them, or to stimulate their thinking.6.4 Conclusions drawn from Cycle 1Even within a constructivist framework, the relationship between teacher and learner (ormaster and apprentice) can remain unidirectional – the former modelling behaviour for thelatter (Duffy and Cunningham, 1996). In this environment, the teacher, in a coaching role,acts as an authority-figure and gives learners explicit directions on what to do, how to do it,and when (Grow, 1991/1996).Evaluation of the Cognitive Apprenticeship model in relation to practitioner characteristicsindicated that although this model addressed some components of industry needs, the fitbetween characteristics of action in the discipline and those of the learning model exhibitedelements of an ‘incorrect’ learning environment. Students learning within the Apprenticeshipmodel exhibited some of the traits of surface learning - they focussed on learning the toolsand techniques of RE at the expense of a more expansive view of the discipline: they did notsee themselves as acquiring the more generic skills valued by practitioners, with the majorityof students focussed on being able to apply the tools and techniques in order to pass the unit.Thus the conclusion reached was that the master/apprentice relation could be down-playedso that students took early control of their own learning, and that a more open approach270