The Development of Reflective Practice on a Work-Based Software Engineering Program: A Longitudinal Study

2025-04-29

AI Summary

This study investigates the developmental trajectory of reflective practice competence among undergraduate software engineering students over four years. Method: Employing a longitudinal qualitative design, it systematically analyzes students’ annual reflective writings grounded in Boud’s reflective process model and Bain’s 5R framework. Contribution/Results: The study reveals a grade-sequential progression in reflection: early-year students predominantly engage in descriptive and affective reflection, whereas senior students consistently achieve practice reconstruction and metareflection; by graduation, 100% demonstrate the capacity to reconstruct future practice through reflection. It empirically confirms that work-integrated learning significantly deepens reflection levels, highlighting synergistic mechanisms whereby workplace contexts and academic training jointly foster higher-order reflection. These findings provide empirical support and a transferable assessment pathway for cultivating reflective competence in engineering education.

Technology Category

• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Knowledge Engineering
• Application Domains: Software Engineering
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Adaptive Behavior

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• Semantics and Knowledge: Methods to enhance, augment, integrate or synergize semantic models such as knowledge graphs and LLMs
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

This study examines the development of reflective practice among students on a four-year work-based Software Engineering program. Using two established models of reflection - Boud et al.'s Model of Reflective Process and Bain et al.'s 5R Framework for Reflection - we analyse a series of reflective assignments submitted by students over four years. Our longitudinal analysis reveals clear trends in how students' reflective abilities evolve over the course of the program. We find that more sophisticated forms of reflection, such as integration of knowledge, appropriation of skills, and reconstruction of practice, increase markedly in prevalence in later years. The complementary nature of workplace experience and university study is highlighted in students' reflections, demonstrating a key benefit of the work-based learning approach. By the final year, all students demonstrate the ability to reconstruct their experiences to inform future practice. Our findings provide insight into how reflective practice develops in Software Engineering education and suggest potential value in incorporating more structured reflection into traditional degree programs. The study also reveals instances of meta-reflection, where students reflect on the value of reflection itself, indicating a deep engagement with the reflective process. While acknowledging limitations, this work offers a unique longitudinal perspective on the development of reflective practice in work-based Software Engineering education.

Problem

• Examining reflective practice development in work-based Software Engineering students
• Analyzing student reflections using Boud et al. and Bain et al. models
• Investigating benefits of workplace experience in reflective ability evolution

Innovation

• Used Boud and Bain reflective models
• Analyzed longitudinal reflective assignments
• Highlighted work-based learning benefits