Learning by doing: a case study of qualitative accounting research

The increasing number of master's degrees in accounting as well as specialist MBA's mean that an understanding of research methods is now an important part of the toolkit of accounting educators. In the literature there has been an increasing interest in qualitative accounting research. Whilst this interest has been mirrored by an increase in qualitative methods textbooks, less is known about the experience of undertaking such research. This presents a problem for educators, as they need material for students to work with and analyse before they are able to design their own research projects. This paper presents a case study based upon an extensive piece of qualitative research concerned with the use of accounting information in decision-making processes in banking. Review, exploratory and application questions provide a framework through which the case study can be used as a learning resource for accounting educators, supervisors and students.     

What future generations might say to us

If future generations could speak to us, what might they say to us about our efforts to learn and teach about them? Probably they would ask us to understand their perspective, to feel connected to them, and to care deeply. When we teach about future generations we should affect the head, heart, soul and hands. This learning and teaching should include inspiration, transpersonal bonding, empowerment, a personal affirmation or pledge, a sense of meaning and purpose, and a commitment to action. Certain books and journals can be especially useful for gaining the perspective of future generations.     

Learning about the future: From the learner's perspective

The path for a hopeful future depends on learning, a process that is a complex symphony of human experience. It is a process that demands deep questioning and critique of our world-views. It is a process that requires that we open ourselves to and effectively cope with a myriad of emotions. It is a process that compels us to engage in soul-searching as we explore our human responsibilities and commitments, connect with the meaning and purpose of our very existence and choose paths of action based on those reflections. Learning to care for future generations and the world they will inherit is a unique and holistic process. Our ability to support this form of learning begins with an understanding of the human experience of learning, from the perspective of learners.     

Trusting future generations, trusting life

The paper outlines an experiential philosophy and approach to teaching and learning about future generations and about life. It includes outlines of two processes facilitated by the author as part of a deep ecology workshop.     

Prospective youth visions through imaginative education

This paper reports research which investigated the views and visions of the future of Steiner educated senior secondary students using quantitative and qualitative methods. The students demonstrated a strong sense of activism and self-confidence and felt empowered to create their own preferred futures. This capability is referred to as `prospectivity' of futures visions. In exploring the human qualities they thought they should develop to contribute to their ideal world in 2020, the students identified such factors as more activism, more awareness, attitude and values changes, future care and more spirituality. A number of features of Steiner education are identified which might contribute to feelings of empowerment in spite of realistic fears and concerns about the future. In conclusion, there is an exploration of theoretical and practical links between the findings and recent speculations of educational futurists in regard to educating young people for the 21st century.     

Adopting commercial software in the accounting classroom: A focus on learning

Concerns about the current state of accounting education are well documented. A common anxiety is that students are not prepared to deal with the complex issues and unstructured problems that they will encounter throughout their professional lives. Recent studies conclude that an educational objective for accounting is to teach students how to learn. This paper discusses adopting commercial-use software as an approach to accomplish this objective. The paper also provides an example for an accounting information systems class. Because “learning to learn” involves teaching students learning strategies, accounting educators need to find new ways to help students acquire these strategies. This paper will be useful for instructors seeking ways to assist students in developing strategies for learning that will better prepare them for careers in a complex and dynamic environment.     

Enhancing Students' Enabling Competencies: Student Perspectives and Recommendations for Educators*

Employers continue to express concern that accounting graduates lack the necessary competencies when they enter the workplace. These concerns have been addressed in part by periodic revisions to Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada's (CPA Canada) CPA Competency Map, which is used to define competencies for entry into the profession. The CPA Competency Map has recently been revised to include a new set of enabling competencies (often called generic or soft skills). However, the accounting literature highlights a concern that time and resources spent on the expanding set of enabling competencies could take valuable resources away from teaching technical accounting skills. In addition, the education literature indicates that student motivation plays a key role in learning. If students are motivated to learn enabling competencies, then educational efforts could be more efficient and effective. Conversely, a lack of student motivation could reduce student engagement and learning. To address these concerns, we investigated the student's perspective on the importance of enabling competencies as well as on how and where enabling competencies should be learned. We surveyed 380 students enrolled in the CPA Canada Professional Education Program (PEP). We investigated the three new enabling competencies that are most distinct from the previous set of competencies and that may be the most difficult for accounting educators to teach: adaptability and resilience; creativity and innovation; and active listening. We asked students about the importance of these new enabling competencies for their future careers and whether the competencies should be taught in PEP or in the workplace. Our results indicate that students believe that the new enabling competencies are important and should be learned in both the classroom and the workplace. Moreover, student responses to open-ended questions provide educators with suggestions on how to incorporate enabling competencies into the classroom by blending activities that could simultaneously enhance enabling competencies with technical competencies.     

Who's doing it? Sources of public and private computer-aided learning materials for accounting educators

This paper provides a listing of commercial computer-aided learning materials available to accounting educators from vendors. It also provides a sampling of computer-aided learning materials authored by accounting educators around the world. The purposes of the paper are to reveal trends in such authoring activities by both business firms and accounting educators and researchers.     

A Critical Learning Outcome Approach in Designing,Delivering and Assessing the IT Knowledge Syllabus

Although the accounting profession has embraced a competency-based approach in the education and training of students, some educators struggle to adapt the delivery and assessment of their accounting programmes to bring them in line with these outcomes. The challenge for all educators is to seek ways to marry the curriculum, the design and delivery of the syllabus and assessment in such a way as to maximize students’ learning in relation to priority goals. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the IFAC curriculum on the general knowledge of IT (IEPS 2) could be analysed using an alternative approach based on critical learning outcomes to develop a syllabus that would enable educators to deliver and assess it in line with the learning outcomes and competency requirements. The newly-developed syllabus should direct educators to adopt a holistic approach in the delivery and assessment of the IT course. This approach should ensure that students understand how information technology can support them as accountants in producing information in the format required by users.     

When do transformative initiatives really transform? A typology of different paths for transition to a sustainable society

This special issue of Futures is filled with good examples of initiatives that each in their own way take part in shaping our common future. Authors from different parts of the world document that the initiatives make a difference within their own realm. The question raised here is how and to what extent such transformative efforts can contribute to transforming the world at macro level, bringing us closer to a sustainable society. Based on the flora of literature about sustainable development, five different answers are presented in the form of five alternative pathways. The goal should not be to reach consensus on which strategy is best, but rather to have as many people as possible marching together in the same direction under different banners. Individuals who see no pathway leading to their goal tend to resign. The combined efforts of people with common goals but different strategies may produce the necessary dynamics to meet the needs of future generations.     

An investigation into student satisfaction,approaches to learning and the learning context in Auditing

Arguably, the audit course is one of the most challenging as it links prior accounting knowledge with new audit knowledge that students are generally not exposed to. A mini‐audit group project was implemented at a New Zealand university, and a learning approach and learning experience survey instrument was administered. Responses from 98 students suggest that they perceived the learning experience positively and were encouraged to adopt a deep approach to learning. The findings have implications for accounting educators in the design and development of learning and assessment strategies in an audit course.     

The future begins today: Nature as teacher in environmental adult popular education

The future begins today is a review of the importance and role of learning, specifically environmental adult and popular education, in working with communities and community-based organizations on planning, organizing and revisioning life from an ecological perspective. The authors report on their work based at the Transformative Learning Centre in Toronto, Canada which explores the role of nature as both teacher and site of learning. Theoretical and practical illustrations are included.All education, up to our present moment, has never countenanced the possibility of planetary destruction from the destruction of the life-support system. This viability of planetary existence was never an issue for educators because it was not, until now, part of our cultural understanding. (Hall and O'Sullivan, Transformative Learning: Contexts and Practices, 1994)The human enterprise cannot be separated from the natural world even in our minds because no such separation exists in nature.(Wackernagel and Rees, Our Ecological Footprint, 1995).     

Ways of knowing, culture, communication and the pedagogies of the future

This article focuses on how cultures are embedded in diverse ways of knowing and how individuals teach (formal, action research, spiritual) and learn the world (action, science, technique or gnosis) differently. We present case-studies or stories of teaching and learning futures and futures generations. These stories tell the fundamental difficulties we face in teaching, communicating and learning across civilization, profession, worldview and pedagogical style. We offer a futures method, causal layered analysis, as one way to enter different knowing spaces. The educational challenge ahead of us is to pass on the rich diversity of culture and ways of knowing to future generations.     

银行与银行博弈结构下的国家助学贷款风险探析

当前,国家助学贷款违约率高以致银行风险大——银行惜贷严重已不容忽视。全面认识国家助学贷款政策实施中存在的风险,保障国家助学贷款政策的可持续性发展,成了我们迫切需要解决的问题。本文试图用博弈论来研究我国助学贷款：即从我国国家助学贷款中较易忽视的银行与银行这对主体间利益博弈所存在的风险成因入手探讨,得出现行国家助学贷款要走出困境需采取的一系列对策。     

Students’ perceptions of their first accounting class: implications for instructors

The purpose of this action research study is to learn directly from undergraduate students, through focus groups, about their experiences in their first accounting class, especially about the students’ knowledge and practice of critical thinking and about which classroom experiences engaged their attention and enhanced learning. The findings show that students want to understand how the first accounting course connects to the business world and to their other classes. Participants were unsure about when and how they practiced critical thinking; for improved learning outcomes, instructors need to keep critical thinking front and center. Students also need instruction in how to study accounting and how to utilize effectively the resources provided in their textbooks and as supplemental tools (e.g. integrated accounting software). Accounting professors must adapt their teaching methods to help students to meet professional demands, such as critical thinking skills and ability to handle a complex global business environment.     

PERSONALITY BIASES OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES

This paper reviews the evidence of a Myers-Briggs personality type bias for accounting students, A survey of a sample of accounting majors in three Australian universities supports the overseas evidence that there appears to be a strong tendency for accounting students to have common preferences on three of the four Myers-Briggs dimensions. The findings of this research suggest that while significant diversity is still evident, there is a bias in the Myers-Briggs personality profiles of accounting students towards preferences for sensation over intuition, thinking over feeling, and judgment over perception. Research in psychology and education has shown that different Myers-Briggs personality preferences are associated with significant differences in how people prefer to learn, and the types of learning experiences under which they perform best, that is personality types are associated with distinct learning styles. These outcomes suggest that accounting educators should cater to the variety of personality types among their students by adopting a diversified teaching approach. Such an approach should provide a balance of learning experiences and teaching strategies by attempting to challenge the weaknesses of the personality bias of accounting students in the intuition, feeling and perception areas, and building upon their strengths in the sensation, thinking and judgment areas.     

Predispositions as determinants of the future

Futures studies has been dominated by the concerns of forecasting and control. This paper suggests that predispositions held by people, especially attitudes and assumptions, have a significant impact on the future and thus constitute an important field of research in futures studies. It discusses three major types of predisposition, and outlines two mechanisms by which they affect the future, especially as it relates to technology. Three examples drawn from real life are then analysed to illustrate the variety of impacts that predispositions have on the future. It is not the intention of this paper to provide a full treatment of the topic, but rather to make an initial proposal. So, finally, the simplifications made in the paper are discussed, and suggestions made about fruitful avenues of further research.     

Anticipatory action learning: conversations about the future

This paper proposes experimenting with anticipatory action learning for helping to create the future. It is an interactive process that relies strongly on a central thread of conversation among a variety of participants, from multiple perspectives, concerned with the social unit or project. Basically, anticipatory action learning is action research modified for foresight. It integrates research/search with decision and action, and downgrades the prerogative of a research elite, empowering all participants. Conversation allows meaning from a range of different worldviews to be shared and negotiated for studying, theorising and otherwise engaging the future—and more importantly, for helping to create it. Criteria are proposed for anticipatory action learning and procedural and administrative limitations are addressed.The visions we have about our own futures vary according to the mindset each of us stands in. It would be fascinating to compare the personally envisioned futures of everyone at an international meeting of futurists. Our futures should converge in some way where we share common interests as futurists, and diverge on the point of intercultural variety. But, would they differ from each other as widely as those of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese generals?It would be even more telling to compare the range of alternative futures envisioned by world leaders with the visions of their constituents and especially, say, with the visions of a woman in Africa’s Central Lakes region and of the homeless in Osaka.In a similar way, the means of engaging the future in order to study it, and its uncertainties, and the way people think about it, are variously dependent on the mindsets of the scholars and researchers, and the realities they find themselves in. Methodologies of futures studies range across the predictable: from empirical quantitative projection (linear and non-linear); to qualitative interpretation and critical analysis; and to participatory action research or its associate, action learning.Then, futures studies differs according to the disciplinary framework of the researcher, whether in physics, ecology, complexity science, social science and the humanities, critical cultural theory or philosophy. Further, there is the division of the pragmatic and academic perspectives.Actually, the very fact of having a formal methodology is itself derived from a dominant civilisational and ethical perspective, mainly Western.There is another important distinction in futures studies. On the one hand, there is the perspective from which futurists research, analyse and critique the future, or more precisely what other people think and say about the future. On the other, there is the perspective from which people in the focal social unit may think and act to create their own futures.Then, acting to create a future poses at least two further distinctions depending on whether one believes the future is structurally preordained, or whether human interaction and intervention play a significant part.It is from the perspective of participative human agency acting to create one future or another, at least partially, that this paper proceeds.Before going further, let us address the question of whether future-creating can rightly be claimed to constitute the study of the future, or future studies. If it is not part of futures studies, then at least future-creating activity does rely on input from the field, the results of studying and reflecting on alternative options for the future—futures, plural. Whatever way we look at creating the future, as opposed to merely researching data about it, the activity does represent a fairly direct, personal engagement of the future, as much as anyone can do about a time–space that has yet to arrive. This is an important distinction, since many empirical futures studies do not so directly engage the future, well not personally. Rather, they examine stated opinions of others about future options, and other people’s preferences, emerging issues and the like, themselves all valuable activities.

If, as Michel Godet has said, ‘...the future is not written anywhere and has still to be built...’ [[1]], creating the future is a central activity which at least deserves full consideration by the field of futures studies, especially if it relies on the analysis and critique of data generated or accessed around the activity itself.

Extending the classroom boundaries – an evaluation of an asynchronous discussion board

Accounting educators are being challenged to revitalize the accounting curriculum and to expand methods of delivery, especially through the application of technology. Web-enhanced course delivery offers an opportunity to expand delivery techniques. This paper evaluates an asynchronous discussion board group exercise in an intermediate accounting course. Analysis of students' perceptions of the exercise indicated that they considered it had contributed to their learning. The discussion board gave them time to analyse other students' responses and to prepare their own contributions. The results show the discussion board made it easier for non-English background students and students over 30 years of age to express an opinion, and made them feel they had to contribute to the discussion. Students raised issues about the quality of the contributions, the lack of feedback from the lecturer on discussion topics, the time taken to complete the exercise and the amount of work involved for the assessment weighting.