The Global Challenge for Accounting Education

Abstract

Accounting and education are both global phenomena, and there is thus an argument that accounting education should be consistent and comparable across the globe. However, accounting, and accounting education are all socially constructed and globally they have been influenced by their historical, social, economic, political and cultural contexts. This has resulted in many fragmented, heterogeneous communities of practice and many diverse audiences or stakeholders with their own interests and legitimation strategies. There is thus a problem for accounting education to be defined, and to coalesce to one world model that fits the needs of all nations. However, global accounting education can adopt similar learning objectives by using constructivist, experiential and situated learning approaches that are embedded in to the learning programme. The International Education Standards (IES) of the IAESB should be revised to embed these three learning approaches, and IFAC and the IAESB should adopt various strategies to gain pragmatic legitimacy for its education standards.

RMIT accounting educators’ conference: 2016 ‘accounting education what it is, and what it is not’

“…The phrase 'accounting education' is surprisingly under-defined in the accounting research literature lacking a precise or comprehensive definition. At its most basic, accounting education is about 'accounting' and 'education', in which the practice of accounting is shared with students through the dissemination of accounting protocols (Helliar, 2013). Within the confines of this narrow definition, accounting in its conventional image is concerned with recording and reporting economic events, while education disseminates the knowledge that underpins the skills necessary to develop competent professionals in the practice of financial and management accounting.…”

“…It is important in contemporary accounting education to understand how accounting interacts with individual behaviour and human social systems. Too often the objective calculable aspects are taught, rather than the behavioural issues that arise around it (Helliar, 2013).…”

Implementing team-based learning (TBL) in accounting courses

“…Other concepts, including scaffolding, are also used as means of supporting and contributing to learning. Scaffolding helps students to become active learners, which should help accounting students to apply accounting concepts to solve real-life problems in a range of contexts, and develop a real mastery of accounting (Helliar, 2013).…”

“…Given that anecdotal and research evidence (e.g., Helliar, 2013) indicates that students have negative perceptions of accounting, we were interested in whether TBL would positively improve students' perceptions and attitudes to this field of study, and whether students viewed TBL as a tool for learning. Furthermore, as team-based teaching and learning activities offer an interactive and very social way of achieving a comprehensive approach to acquiring employability skills relevant to the accounting profession (Lightner et al, 2007), we also sought to determine what students thought about their abilities to work effectively in diverse teams, and how they perceived their abilities and preferences for the various roles that develop through the completion of team tasks might have changed during the semester.…”

Estudo Comparativo entre o Currículo Mundial e os Currículos dos Cursos de Ciências Contábeis em IES Federais do Estado do Rio de Janeiro

“…Os pesquisadores divergem , por exemplo, de qual deva ser a proporção entre o conhecimento geral e o conhecimento técnico do currículo, ou até mesmo a filosofia que embasa seu ensino (construtivista, clássico) (Chen, 2014;Helliar, 2013).…”