Integrating a foundation for the development of critical thinking skills into an introductory accounting class

ABSTRACT

We address calls to develop accountants’ critical thinking skills by describing a pedagogy based on Bloom’s ([1956]. Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook I: The cognitive domain. David McKay) taxonomy for cognitive development which can be integrated into an introductory accounting class. The pedagogy recommends instructors be more cognizant of how critical thinking skills are developed, and adopt instructional examples, problems, and testing strategies for each course topic that are explicitly intended to help develop students’ critical thinking skills in a stepwise manner. To facilitate implementation, we describe how an introductory accounting class was modified to accommodate the proposed pedagogy. Specific examples are included. We also provide preliminary evidence that the proposed pedagogy positively impacts students’ ability to apply accounting concepts (i.e. step three of six in Bloom’s taxonomy).

KEYWORDS:

• Critical thinking
• introductory accounting course
• Bloom’s taxonomy
• instructional techniques

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the helpful comments of Abdullah Al-Moshaigeh, Colleen Boland, Kim Mallard, Mark McCarthy, Willie D. Reddic, Debra Schisler, and several anonymous reviewers on the study’s design and on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Anderson et al. (2001) modified the description of Bloom’s path of cognitive development to be remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. We do not believe their changes significantly modified the underlying constructs or ideas of the 1956 taxonomy. Importantly, our recommendations and tests are not dependent upon a single taxonomy for cognitive development.

2 Attrition is due to students dropping or not taking an exam, which is not unusual in an introductory accounting course.

3 Results are consistent if EC2 is modified to be an indicator variable equal to one if a student’s performance improved comparing the results of EC1 and EC2, otherwise equal to zero. Using binary logistic regression, the coefficient on the variable, participate, remains statistically significant (p = 0.03, n = 162).

4 We believe the only systematic difference between the Spring/Fall 2020 student-cohort and Spring/Summer 2021 student-cohort was the impact of COVID-19. The four classes were taught by the same instructor, reducing the likelihood that noted improvements are attributed to instructional differences. We also compared student characteristics among the Fall 2019 (n = 1,823), Fall 2020 (n = 2031), and Fall 2021(n = 2543) College of Business (COB) Freshmen cohorts (all COB majors are required to take the introductory accounting course). The average unweighted high school GPA was 3.26, 3.32, and 3.30, respectively, the percentage of men was 67, 67, and 63, respectively, and 100% of incoming Freshmen were under age 24. These data reinforce our conclusion that the proposed pedagogy contributes to students’ ability to apply accounting concepts and to the future development of students’ critical thinking skills.