Teaching for understanding and its specialization to software engineering

Learning outcomes may be expressed as a set of items to be addressed and corresponding performance levels to be reached for each item. Engineering involves the capability to perform engineering functions, so it is desirable that learning outcomes address engineering performance. There are several frameworks for defining education levels. We briefly summarize the dimensions and understanding frameworks that were developed by one of the branches of the teaching for understanding school of educational thought. A few examples of specializing the dimensions and understanding frameworks to software engineering education are presented. The dimensions framework is compared with a set of levels from an agile process source, which also addresses software engineering performance. The dimensions and understanding frameworks appear to apply well to software engineering.