The reflective practitioner perspective in software engineering education

This paper focuses on the application of the reflective practitioner (RP) perspective to the profession of software engineering (SE). The RP perspective guides professional people to rethink their professional creations during and after the accomplishment of the creation process. Analysis of the field of SE supports the adoption of the RP perspective to SE in general and to SE education in particular. The RP perspective emphasizes the studio––the basic training method in architecture schools––as the educational environment for design studies. In such studios students develop projects with a close guidance of a tutor. Analysis of the kind of tasks that architecture students are working on and a comparison of these tasks to the problems that SE students are facing, suggest that the studio may be an appropriate teaching method in SE as well. The paper presents the main ideas of the RP perspective and examines its fitness to SE in general and to SE education in particular. The discussion is based on analysis of the RP perspective and of the SE profession, visits to architecture studios, and conversations with tutors in architecture studios and with computing science practitioners.