Towards Assessing Attitudes and Values in the Practice of Software Engineering: The Competency-Based Learning Approach

Abstract

Knowledges and skills are important elements to perform a professional job. However, personal attributes such as attitudes and values determine how an engineer uses knowledges and skills in optimal way. Commonly employers request knowledges and skills, without explicit requisite of attitudes and values. In the academic context there is a few attention on teaching explicitly such personal attributes; moreover, there are not much guidelines on how to assess attitudes and values. In this paper we present a proposal towards a formalization of the connection between the Bloom’s Taxonomy and attitudes and values. We also present a pilot survey applied to students and graduates for assessing the acceptance and appreciation of Software Engineering knowledges and the practice of personal attributes. We obtained encouraged results, which shown that attitudes and values are practiced during the learning and workplace practice of Software Engineering knowledges.