Privileging Tacit Knowledge within a Software Engineering Curriculum: A Living Educational Theory of Practice

Through action research I inquired into my pedagogical practice by questioning the nature of knowledge I valued as a lecturer. This questioning led me to develop my ‘living educational theory’ (Whitehead, 1989, p.41) of privileging tacit knowledge within a Software Engineering curriculum. My living educational theory is grounded in ideas of professional knowledge, relationships, competence, and expertise. In developing my theory, I explain how I transformed my ontological values of justice, democracy, and care in relation to students through standards of judgement that I developed to direct, test, and evaluate actions I took to improve my pedagogical practice. I describe how I experienced conflict between my existing practice and ontological values that led me to see myself as a ‘living contradiction’ (Whitehead, 1989, p.41) and to critique the dominant didactic perspectives located within my practice which privileged explicit disciplinary knowledge within a Software Engineering curriculum. To overcome feeling like a living contradiction, I researched and engaged with dialogical problem-posing pedagogies to encourage and support students to actively participate in their own development of becoming competent software engineering professionals. The dialogical problem-posing pedagogy I developed during this inquiry is constructed on the basis of just, democratic, and caring relationships with students, who are capable of exercising their agency and are constantly remaking their identity as they both create and use professional knowledge to solve Software Engineering problems. As I engaged with this dialogical problem-posing pedagogy, I re-conceptualised my identity as a pedagogical practitioner. I questioned the traditional and dominant orthodoxies that I subscribed to and which dictated that I positioned myself as the knowledge expert within the classroom. In doing so, I took action to move from being the knowledge expert to being a facilitator within the classroom to help students to realise their capacity to become competent software engineering practitioners