Conceptions of Learning and Approaches to Learning—A Phenomenographic Study of a Group of Overseas Accounting Students from Sri Lanka

Abstract

This study explores conceptions of learning (SCL) and approaches to learning (SAL) of a group of Sri Lankan students studying accounting in an Australian university. The focus is on how cultural background and home country learning experiences shape SCL and SAL of these students. This research is based on the phenomenographic method, and semi-structured interviews are used for data collection. The results indicate that the interviewed students have lower-order conceptions of learning, and show characteristics of surface learning. Although the social approval motive was dominant in these students, it was not manifested in an achieving approach. Students in this study embrace the pedagogical tradition of the West, and engage in deep learning when they are exposed to research or practice-based assessments. Remnants from years of secondary education and aspects of a collectivist culture play a vital part in the ways in which these students perceive and approach learning. In addition, preconceptions of accounting as a vocation and a discipline strongly embedded in practice, drive learning conceptions and learning approaches.

Keywords:

• Accounting students
• culture
• phenomenonography
• Sri Lanka
• approaches to learning
• student conceptions of learning

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Associate Professor Irene Tempone of the Faculty of Business and Enterprise at Swinburne University, participants at the 2009 IAAER-ANPCONT (3rd) International Accounting congress in São Paulo, two anonymous referees and an Associate Editor of this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

Countries of the Indian sub-continent include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

SAL can be contrasted with learning styles, in that a learning style is a predisposition to adopt a particular learning strategy regardless of the teaching context. Learning styles are thus stable, trait-like characteristics of individuals.

The literature supporting this view shows that the Western conception that memorisation, a strategy labelled as resulting in surface learning, and understanding are mutually exclusive is invalid, and a distinction needs to be made within memorisation (Marton, Dall'Alba and Kun, 1996).

The importance of extending the literature on SAL in accounting was signified by Accounting Education: an international journal jointly sponsoring a Symposium on Approaches to Learning in Accounting Education, with the University of Sydney in 2003 (Lucas and Mladenovic, 2004)

The three professional accounting bodies in Australia are CPA Australia, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, and the National Institute of Accountants.

See Ravenscroft, Buckless and Hassall (1999) for an annotated bibliography of cooperative learning.