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Background and Context. Dispositions are personal qualities including values, beliefs, and attitudes that impact an individual's actions and behaviors. Dispositions help a person identify why and when things need to be done and motivate them to follow through in action using their knowledge and skills. A person may have the appropriate skills and knowledge to perform a task and yet may not be able to perform due to the lack of suitable disposition. Objective. As part of a larger multi-institutional project aimed at improving computing education through a competency-based approach, we plan to create a research-informed competency model that includes knowledge, skills, and dispositions valued by computing professionals in the field. The objective of this paper is to report our findings on dispositions based on the National Research Council (NRC) framework. Method. We collected data from conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) and interviewing computing professionals from the United States. For the SLR, we started with 4949 articles from prominent databases (ERIC, SCOPUS, ACM, IEEE) which were filtered down to 52 research papers using rigorous inclusion-exclusion criteria. For conducting the semi-structured interviews, we used criterion and chain-link sampling to recruit 31 computing professionals, including software developers, network administrators, systems analysts, web developers, engineering managers, and others. Findings. Based on the aggregate findings from the SLR and interviews, in this paper we present the dispositions that are deemed necessary by computing professionals or employers to any computing career. The dispositions were categorized into the themes of Collaborative Orientation, Conscientiousness, Intellectual Openness, Self-Regulation, and Lifelong Learning Orientation. Implications. We discuss the importance of incorporating dispositions in computing curricula, interrelationship between skills and dispositions, and possible pedagogical techniques that can be used to cultivate dispositions.
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Work In Progress: Importance of dispositions on the job: Survey of computing professionals
This work-in-progress research paper shares the findings of a survey of computing professionals regarding the importance of various dispositions on the job. Survey findings from recent graduates also include their perception of how well each disposition was covered in their undergraduate courses. Dispositions are beliefs, attitudes, or values, such as being ethical, being persistent, and valuing collaboration. Dispositions impact whether individuals will apply their knowledge and skills appropriately in any given situation. There is increasing recognition of the importance of dispositions in the realm of computing education, as evidenced by recent computing curricular guidelines (e.g., IT2017 and CC2020). However, few existing studies of professionals explicitly discriminate between dispositions and other types of competencies (e.g., cross-disciplinary or “soft” skills). Furthermore, little research has been focused on the degree to which professionals believe that dispositions have been adequately covered by computing education in the United States. This study will present the findings of a survey of computing professionals, utilizing items based on on a list of 30 dispositions derived from earlier studies. It will present practitioners’ perceptions of the importance of each of the 30 dispositions and will also present the satisfaction recent graduates (who have graduated with an undergraduate degree within the last 5 years) have with the coverage of these dispositions during their undergraduate experience. Findings of this paper may reveal not only of the importance of dispositions in general, but which dispositions are most important, and which are most or least covered in current educational programs. The research team recommends that higher education administrators, curriculum designers and individual faculty members use the data-informed disposition list, in conjunction with college/university and departmental vision and values, to select a small number of dispositions to purposefully incorporate across their program. Findings may also be of interest to curricular guideline committees and scholars interested in dispositions, competency-based education, character education, or virtue ethics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2111097
- PAR ID:
- 10594499
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 979-8-3503-5150-7
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- dispositions, competencies, soft skills, industry, career readiness
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Washington, DC, USA
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Proceeding:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE61694.2024
