An exploration of the learning approaches of prospective professional accountants in Ireland

Abstract

In light of the ongoing accounting education change debate, it is surprising that few prior studies have explored student learning issues within professional accounting education. This paper investigates the learning approaches of students preparing for the qualifying examination of a professional accountancy body in Ireland. The findings reveal that strategic learning approaches dominated, as students engaged in learning activities which they considered were most likely to lead to examination success. Variations between the learning approaches based on gender are also considered and the approaches of students who were ultimately successful at the examination were compared to those who failed.

Keywords:

• Accounting education
• Learning approaches
• Learning environment
• Professional accountancy body
• Prospective professional accountants
• Professional accounting examinations

Acknowledgements

The assistance of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland in facilitating this study is gratefully acknowledged. In addition, the first named author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for the research study on which this paper is based. The authors are also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 In the post-Enron era many accounting journals are re-igniting the debate on the future of accounting education e.g. see special issues/debates of the European Accounting Review (Volume 14, Issue 2), Critical Perspectives on Accounting (Volume 15, Issue 5) and Accounting Education: An international journal (Volume 13, Issue 4).

2 It is interesting to note that West (2003, p. 63) contends that the elevation of accounting to professional status had less to do with the cognitively based expertise of accounting knowledge and resulted more from the “social class, gender and political acuity of early accountants”.

3 For an overview of this research see Marton and Booth (1997) and Prosser and Trigwell (1999).

4 A copy of the ASISST and permission to use it for this study was received from N. Entwistle, Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction, University of Edinburgh.

5 The ICAI is an all-Ireland body and so crosses the jurisdictions of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

6 The subscale scores for each student were calculated by adding their responses to each of the four items in each subscale. The scores for the three main scales were then calculated by adding the scores for each of the constituent subscales. Additionally, to aid comparison between the scores on the three scales, the scores were scaled relative to the number of constituent subscales. For example, the total achieved in adding the scores on each of the deep subscales was then divided by four (the number of constituent subscales). Thus, the valid scores on the main scales or any of the subscales ranged from 4 to 20.

7 The student for whom pass/fail could not be determined did not appear on the pass list. They definitely did not pass, but it is possible that they did not present due to illness or other circumstances rather than being ‘complete fails’.