Abstract—Paper draws from Apostolou et al. [1] in providing an updated literature review on accounting education. The employed research methodology is similar to that used by Apostolou et al. [1], paper’s objective being that of continuing their analysis through the considered time period. In doing so we develop an analysis covering 421 articles published over the 2-year period, 2010-2012, in six journals: Journal of Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, and The Accounting Educators’ Journal. Paper aims to achieve an overview of all articles published in the six journals in the specified time period. The considered journal papers are first divided into three categories, namely main/original articles, educational cases and additional articles. We further categorize main/original articles into five sections (students, curriculum, educational technology, educators and literature review). Our findings contribute to the body of literature on accounting education by providing a comprehensive analysis that categorizes journal papers into main sections, therefore documenting main approached topics. Each section (and subsection where available) is described and discussed while presenting papers it includes. We conclude by positioning our results in relation to previous literature review studies. The obtained results contribute to the literature by documenting the evolution of research interest in the area of accounting education.
Keywords—Literature review, Accounting education, Journal papers, Sections, Research interest.
I. INTRODUCTION
HIS paper continues, from a temporal perspective, the fourth accounting education literature review series written by Apostolou et al. [1], the first being published in 2001 and covering the 1997-1999 period, the second in 2003 and analyzing the 2000-2002 period, followed by one published in 2007 for the period 2003-2005, and ended with the accounting education literature review published in 2010 and covering the 2006-2009 period. The employed research methodology is similar to that used by Apostolou et al. in their series, our paper’s objective being that of continuing their analysis through the considered time period. In this case, we develop an analysis covering 421 articles published over the 2-year period, 2010-2012, in six journals: Journal of Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, and The Accounting Educators’ Journal. The purpose of this paper G.V. Cailean is Ph.D. student at Babes-Bolyai University Cluj Napoca, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Romania.
J. Strouhal is with University of Economics Prague, W. Churchill Square 4, 130 67 Prague 3, Czech Republic (e-mail: [email protected]).
is to develop an overview of all articles published in the six journals in the specified time period. The considered journal papers are first divided into three categories, namely main/original articles, educational cases and additional articles. Additional articles regards research notes, postcards, book reviews, discussions and briefing on accounting education, commentaries to articles, teaching materials, rejoinders, panel reports and conference reports. The reminder of the paper is organized as follows: briefly discussing the employed research methodology, developing the analysis and interpreting the obtained results and finally concluding with some general remarks and discussions.
II.RESEARCH DESIGN
In order to achieve the above mentioned purpose, the employed research methodology is based on data collection through the observation method. A very important step in developing relates to sorting the articles as we will show below, and creating the databases which helped us to organize our articles in three categories and five sections.
The term of research methodology means “ways of obtaining answers to your professional questions. These methods range from the fairly informal based upon clinical impression, to the strictly scientific, adhering to the conventional expectations of scientific procedures. Research is one of the ways to find answers to your questions” (Kumar, [14]). The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English lays down the meaning of research as “a careful investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.” The steps we followed in organizing our work for this paper started with searching the specified journals and their containing articles from 2010-2012. Journals were searched in online databases available at our faculty. After finding all articles, downloading and sorted them by year, we started to read them, summarize, analyze and organize in categories and sections. With the purpose of our paper in mind we developed our own databases by using Excel spreadsheets, first focusing on journal and the three main categories and after that on the particular approached topics.
III. RESULTS
After constructing the databases employed in our analysis, we concluded that for the 2010-2012 considered period, of the 421 articles published, 213 are main/original articles, 106 are educational cases for practice and 102 are additional articles which meet the above mentioned categories. Furthermore, we categorized the 213 main/original articles in five sections
Spotlight on Accounting Education Studies
Georgeta V. Cailean, and Jiří Strouhal
(students, curriculum and accounting specific documents, educational technology, educators and literature review) based on the main topics that they develop. The students section is further divided by subsections (cheating and plagiarism, doctoral program, students vs. employees, assessment and importance of high school). Out the 213 main articles, 83 of them regard students, 77 curriculum and accounting specific documents, 23 educational technology, 29 educators and one regards accounting education literature review (namely Apostolou et al. 2010). We will further synthesize the main aspects being approached by articles belonging to each section and subsection.
A.Students
This section is further divided into five subsections: cheating and plagiarism, doctoral programs, students vs. employees, assessment and importance of high school. Every subsection contains papers from the six journals mentioned before. The total number of papers included in this section is 83. The repartition of papers on subsections is as follows: 8 on cheating and plagiarism, 7 on doctoral programs, 11 on students vs. employees, 18 on assessment and one on importance of high school. This section reviews papers related to student issues and covers the following topics: generic skills of students, ethics and ethical judgment, graduates skills, scholarship, types of research for dissertation, class participation, learning styles and approaches, recruitment and career opportunities, tricks to enhance student motivation and learning, tools to improve student performance, the effect of a moral education program on the ethical judgment making ability of university students, students' approaches to learning, the need to develop listening skills as part of the accounting curriculum. Graham [9], initiated a study in which he solicited the views of students in order to assess the goals and effectiveness of the teaching of ethics in undergraduate Accounting programs. The results appear to show that students regard ethics teaching as being important to them and that a stand-alone ethics course is preferred to integrated teaching across the curriculum. Ballantine and Mccourt [3], investigate the possibility of auditing students' ethical judgment being affected by two factors, namely ethical orientation and gender. Overall no significant relationship was found between ethical orientation and ethical judgment. The study also reported no significant relationship between gender and ethical judgment. Keneley and Jackling [13], examine the generic skills that students perceived they acquired in their accounting studies in preparation for graduate employment. The findings demonstrate that, overall, students believed that their accounting course assisted in developing generic skills, while differences in perceptions were identified between different cultural cohorts.
Cheating and plagiarism – this subsection reviews papers related to predicting cheating behavior, costs and benefits of academic cheating, the influence of students which are cheating on others, academic fraud through Internet, unintentional plagiarism, the most important factors of
plagiarism, methods to identify and detect plagiarism. O’Neill and Pfeiffer [18], examined in their paper the costs and benefits of academic cheating developing a model of academic cheating based on three sets of incentives - moral, social and economic - and how they affect cheating behaviors. They document that unless an honor code is embraced by the college community, the existence of an honor code by itself will not reduce cheating. Guo [10], started an empirical study on 381 UK students to the understanding of student plagiarism. The paper concludes by suggesting that educators should adopt a supportive approach to motivating students to act in a consistent, ethical manner in their academic life. The most important factors of plagiarism found were fear of failure and time pressure. MacGregor and Stuebs [16] explore and document the association between students' rationalizations and fraudulent academic decisions and behaviors. Their primary conclusion was that rationalization plays a vital role in students' academic improprieties. Building personal relationships and connections with students can also limit certain fraudulent academic activities. Singh et al. [21] present three tried and tested methods built into spreadsheet software to identify and detect plagiarism in spreadsheet based assignments. The first method is a manual method of hiding unique markers in files sent to students. The second method involves hiding a formula that can track plagiarism in more detail. The third method uses a program code to track issues related to authorship of assignments. These methods along with a compiled list of strategies discussed in this paper can help reduce plagiarism.
Doctoral programs – Baldwin et al. [2] provide descriptions of accounting doctoral programs on a wider range of characteristics. They also provide insight into the current shortage of accounting doctoral graduates and future areas of research. These results may be particularly useful to doctoral applicants as well as to doctoral program directors, accreditation bodies, and search committees looking to differentiate or benchmark programs. Through their paper, Fogarty et al. [7] seek to help participants in the labor market, doctoral candidates and those that hire them, obtain a more informed appreciation for their realistic prospects. The paper is useful for those who tend to believe that there is a singular academic labor market that will receive them as they approach the completion of their doctoral programs. Guthrie et al. [11], proposed a new model, the Author Affiliation Index (AAI), for examining journal quality, explained how the AAI is calculated, and report the resulting scores for 35 accounting and accounting-related journals. Although their illustrations focus on the construction of this measure for use by Ph.D. granting institutions, they describe how it can be adapted for use by other faculty groups.
Students vs. employees – Sin et al. [20] develop a study that investigates undergraduate accounting students' conceptions of accounting work and discusses the relevance of such conceptions for the work readiness of graduates. They argue that the findings of their work suggest the need for new kinds
of curriculum resources to develop students' conceptions of accounting work to better align them with the needs of professional practice today. Crawford et al. [5] develop a study aiming to find skills (defined as generic skills) that are necessary for an individual to possess in order to act as a competent accountant and auditor.
Assessment – the eighteen accounting education papers focusing on assessment are reviewed in this subsection, including assessment feedback, from paper methods to online, why use multiple choice questions, and the question if does cognitive style affect performance on accounting examination questions. Mariott and Teoh [17] study feedback assessment using screencast technology. They said that the feedback on assessments can be recorded into a digital video, together with audio narration, which provides students with personalized comments in an easy-to-follow and comprehensible way. The findings reveal that students are very positive about the introduction of audio and visual feedback. Curtis [6] develops a conceptual discussion from the general education literature to explain how formative assessment (FA) improves learning and discussion of research that has identified features that affect the efficacy of FA practice.
Importance of high school – this subsection covers only one paper about high school and his influence among students. Xiang and Gruber [24] develop a study that investigates the effect a high school accounting course has on student performance in their first postsecondary level financial accounting course (midterm examinations and course grades). The results suggest this relationship is significant and positive, yet must be interpreted carefully. For example, scholastic aptitude, time management skills, and other intrinsic values also play an important role in student achievement.
B.Curriculum and Accounting Specific Documents
This section is the second in terms of the largest number of papers, contains a number of 77 papers and covers the following topics: textbooks, skills developing program, extracurricular experience, characteristics, team learning, integrated research, emotional intelligence, course on judgment, applied learning exercises, online vs. traditional accounting methods, accounting research in classroom, progress in curriculum, methodology, virtual office hours, structure of courses. Lillie and Wygal [15] study the development and use of a “Virtual Office Hours” (VOH) platform to enhance opportunities to engage students in their learning beyond the classroom environment. This approach has been developed as a result of instructor experience with adding technology applications in the accounting classroom to better reflect practice environment needs. In so doing, the approach uses tools that students will likely apply in the practice setting to interact with clients and colleagues. Willits [23] discusses that what is actually delivered today by many arts and sciences colleges does not achieve the claimed benefits of a liberal education. Thus it falls on accounting educators to structure courses in ways that will make them exercises in liberal learning. The paper also discusses several
strategies for enhancing the value of the general education component of each student’s education.
C.Education Technology
This section contains a number of 23 papers and reviews papers related to: students’ attitudes toward WBH change with use, interactive professional learning experience, virtual courses, problem based learning, index to evaluate journal quality, online academic resources, online homework, web based homework software, student response to online courses, hypertext learning aid, learning platform, use of intelligent learning, tutorials for improving performance, multimedia instructional supplement or computerized classroom. Gaffney et al. [8] compare student performance and course satisfaction in two large sections of an introductory financial accounting course. The students in one section used an online homework management system (OHMS), whereas the students in the other section used traditional homework methods. The results provide some evidence that online homework management system enhances students’ performance on some of the performance measures. Chen et al. [4] examine the relative efficacy of groups in both virtual and traditional face-to-face courses, as well as differences in group dynamics between the two delivery methods. Traditional classroom students were more positive about their group processes and learning outcomes than were online students.
D.Educators
This section include papers regarding accounting teaching methods, the role of improvement, the method of using clickers in teaching, or pedagogical approach. We have here a number of 29 papers on these topics. Premuroso et el. [19] initiated a survey about technological innovations utilized in the classroom to teach this course, which include Audience Response Systems (ARS), whereby the instructor poses questions related to the course material to students who each respond by using a clicker and receiving immediate feedback. In a highly controlled experimental situation, they find significant improvements in the overall student examination performance when teaching this course using clickers as compared to traditional classroom teaching techniques. Healy and McCutcheon [12] discuss teaching with case studies. This study explores how accounting lecturers at an Irish university experience teaching with case studies. This suggests that, to inform the debate on its potential benefits, more extensive consideration needs to be paid to the manner in which accounting educators actually engage with the case method. Stout and Wygal [22] present evidence of classroom behaviors to be avoided because of their perceived negative effect on student learning. They report responses from 105 accounting educators who have been formally recognized for their teaching excellence. The responses suggest the following major factors (in decreasing order of importance): negative or uncaring attitudes about students and the class; improper preparation and organization; faulty or deficient course-delivery skills; assessment mistakes.
IV. CONCLUSION
Our analysis, covering the period 2010-2012, includes 421 papers published in the six journals: Journal of Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, and The Accounting Educators’ Journal. The considered journal papers are first divided into three categories, namely main/original articles, educational cases and additional articles. In what follows we will try to review the main differences and similarities found in our work compared to the last two literature reviews from the series written by Apostolou et al. The comparative analysis includes both the paper covering the 2006-2009 period and the 2003-2005 period. Apostolou et al. [1] cover articles categorized into four sections, namely: curriculum, assurance of learning and instruction, educational technology, faculty issues and students. All sections are divided into subsections and then all subsections are categorized into empirical and descriptive articles. In the six journals, they find a number of 330 articles categorized as follows: 187 talking about curriculum, assurance of learning and instruction, 18 about educational technology, 66 about faculty issues and 59 about students. In the same time, out of the 330 articles, 185 are empirical and 145 descriptive articles. The four sections are divided into subsections. The section curriculum, assurance of learning and instruction contains articles with the topics: overall curricular issues, assurance of learning, 150-h curriculum, graduate programs, core competencies, instructional approaches, specific content area (accounting information systems, auditing and forensic accounting, ethics and professional responsibility, financial accounting, managerial and cost accounting, taxation, international and governmental accounting, business law and historical perspective on accounting descriptive articles). The section educational technology has the following subsections: technology-assisted education, distance education and the section faculty issues contains the following subsections: research, evaluation of faculty performance and other faculty issues. In the section students, they included choice of major and career, student skills and characteristics, learning styles and approaches. Apostolou et al. [1] analyze articles published in the period 2003-2005 in the five journals: Journal of Accounting Education, Issues in Accounting Education, Accounting Education: An International Journal, Advances in Accounting Education, and Global Perspectives on Accounting Education. In this paper all articles in number of 223 were divided into five sections: assessment, curriculum and instructions, educational technology, faculty issues and students. Again all articles are further categorized into empirical and descriptive depending on the kind of information presented.
Our analysis covers a number of 213 articles, ten articles less than the analysis of Apostolou from 2007, and 117 articles more than the analysis from 2010, documenting an increase of researchers’ interest in accounting education based research.
The sections which have been established through the analysis being developed by all three studies are curriculum, educational technology and students. Our findings contribute to the body of literature on accounting education by providing a comprehensive analysis that categorizes journal papers into main sections, therefore documenting main approached topics. We conclude by positioning our results in relation to previous literature review studies. The obtained results contribute to the literature by documenting the evolution of research interest in the area of accounting education. Among the limits of the developed analysis we should mention only considering the journals devoted to accounting education. Potential future research directions could be found in extending the analysis by including the articles on accounting education published in other journals, detailed analysis of educational cases and additional articles, as well as a future expansion of the considered time horizon that would grant a permanently updated synthesis.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is one of the research outputs of the project P403/11/0002 registered at Czech Science Foundation (GAČR).
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