Future-proofing accounting education: Educating for complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty

Distance learning as emergency remote teaching vs. traditional learning for accounting students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Cross-country evidence

“…For instance, respondents from France, Oman, and Qatar believe that developing their communication skills (S25 mean) was not affected when their universities applied DL instead of TL due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These results are not in alignment with prior research, which has claimed that the adoption of DL as an emergency remote teaching mode is a good opportunity to gain professional and technical skills in terms of the students’ self-development capabilities ( McGuigan, 2021 ; O’Connell et al, 2022 ). McGuigan (2021) also considered the pandemic an opportunity that leads to increasing students’ self-independence, thus increasing their awareness concerning self-development capabilities.…”

“…These results are not in alignment with prior research, which has claimed that the adoption of DL as an emergency remote teaching mode is a good opportunity to gain professional and technical skills in terms of the students’ self-development capabilities ( McGuigan, 2021 ; O’Connell et al, 2022 ). McGuigan (2021) also considered the pandemic an opportunity that leads to increasing students’ self-independence, thus increasing their awareness concerning self-development capabilities. This, according to McGuigan (2021) , creates among students a self-learning environment that develops their professional skills ( O’Connell et al, 2022 ).…”

“… McGuigan (2021) also considered the pandemic an opportunity that leads to increasing students’ self-independence, thus increasing their awareness concerning self-development capabilities. This, according to McGuigan (2021) , creates among students a self-learning environment that develops their professional skills ( O’Connell et al, 2022 ). However, some prior literature has argued that this is dependent on the mode of DL delivery [synchronous (chat) or asynchronous (discussion board)] ( Duncan et al, 2012 , McBrien et al, 2009 ).…”

“…During the pandemic, prior studies have found that the adoption of DL as emergency remote teaching is a good opportunity to gain professional and technical skills through the students’ self-development capabilities ( McGuigan, 2021 ; O’Connell et al, 2022 ). Specifically, McGuigan (2021) considered that the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown restrictions led to students becoming more self-independent, thus increasing their awareness concerning self-development capabilities in order to create their own learning environment to gain professional skills. This may lead to positive expectations for enhanced professional decision-making and problem-solving skills in post-COVID-19 educational settings and among post-COVID-19 accounting graduates ( O’Connell et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Accounting has been chosen in this research based on its broader definition/importance in the context of social, moral, and technical practices in our business world ( McGuigan, 2021 ). Specifically, accounting is the “central processes” of firms within public and private sectors, as well as profit and non-profit organizations ( Carnegie et al, 2021, p. 69 ).…”