A Concept for Addressing Abstract Thinking Competence While Teaching Software Development

It is commonly agreed that the competence of abstract thinking is an important skill for software developers. The analysis of students’ answers of our in-house developed Abstract Thinking Assessment (ATA) provides evidence that the competence of abstract thinking is an essential prerequisite for the acquisition of professional software development skills. Moreover, a deficit in abstract thinking competence of first-year students is indicated by the data. Thus, teaching professional software development skills should address the competence of abstract thinking explicitly.The question we try to answer is: How can we promote abstract thinking competence in a course on software development? This work proposes a concept to address the students’ competence of abstract thinking integrated into a class on software development. This paper presents the revision of the teaching concept of the module Software Development I with regard to the competence of abstract thinking. Concepts and approaches from literature are discussed. Moreover, we present the preparation of the teaching units, the material used and how they have been put into practice. This process considers findings from the competence model, the analysis of the ATA and the literature review. Furthermore, the teaching style has been changed from a traditional approach to pair-teaching. In the end, the teaching concept is evaluated.