Accounting educators are concerned by research suggesting that accounting students frequently adopt a surface approach to learning given that this approach has been shown to result in undesirable learning outcomes (Eley, 1992; Booth et al., 1999). Despite mixed empirical evidence, the possibility of encouraging students to adopt a deep approach to learning through interventions in the learning context is suggested by the approaches to learning and metacognition literatures. Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985) provides principles upon which such interventions might be based. This paper, first, provides a rich description of an intervention in an introductory accounting course to encourage a deep approach to learning by improving students' written communication skills. Second, the effectiveness of the intervention is examined by comparing students' approaches to learning, using Biggs' (1987a) Study Process Questionnaire, with those at another leading Australian university offering a more 'traditional' course. The findings broadly confirm the effectiveness of the intervention, both in encouraging a deep approach, and in improving overall course results.approaches to learning, functional linguistics, study process questionnaire, deep approach to learning, writing and curriculum design, introductory accounting,

This paper documents the growing dependence of Australian governments on the use of private funding to provide infrastructure and related services to the public. Using a Habermasian framework proposed by Broadbent and Laughlin (1999) we examine their second research question: "What is the nature of PFI and who is regulating their application?" to frame our analysis of the complex relationships between steering media and steering mechanisms in determining the operation of privately financed projects (PFP) in Australia. A secondary, but related concern, is to explore the linkages between the macro economic policy debates that gave rise to PFP and their implications for the micro organisational control issues. The debate about whether or not PFP are a response by governments to macro economic pressures remains unresolved. Similarly, there is evidence that governments are not as successful as private-sector consortia at identifying and shifting risk and, therefore, at achieving value-for-money (VFM). Ultimate PFP outcomes depend on two factors: broad policy parameters established by governments (steering mechanisms) either discreetly, or through other appointed steering media; and execution at the micro or organisational level, that is, on the decisions and actions taken by a variety of actors interfacing with PFP.

Performance auditing in a New Public Management (NPM) setting presents auditorsgeneral with significant challenges in problematising and auditing [effectiveness]. The literature suggests that in providing guidance as to how NPM policies should be implemented, some state audits have developed as a means of legitimising policy implementation, rather than providing independent opinion about whether policies have been implemented effectively and public money spent appropriately. In the context of public private partnerships (PPPs), what constitutes ‘effective’ oversight remains contested. This paper presents Australian evidence about the focus and extent of state audit oversight of PPP projects. It investigates the use by auditors‐general of processes established in PPP policies to frame performance audit investigations to determine whether Australian auditors‐general have critically evaluated the effectiveness of the implementation of PPP projects.

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