On the Role of Learning Theories in Furthering Software Engineering Education

Learning theories describe how people learn. There is a large body of work concerning learning theories on which to draw, a valuable resource of which the domain of software engineering educational research has thus far not taken full advantage. In this paper, the authors explore what role learning theories could play in software engineering education. They propose that learning theories can move the field of software engineering education forward by helping one to categorize, design, evaluate, and communicate about software engineering educational approaches. They demonstrate this by: Surveying a set of relevant learning theories, presenting a categorization of common software engineering educational approaches in terms of learning theories.