Unlocking the potential: enhancing higher-order thinking skills in accounting education

ABSTRACT

In addition to technical expertise, businesses require accounting graduates to have enhanced higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), such as evaluative and creative skills. Higher education scholars describe pedagogical practices that help students develop HOTS and emphasise the importance for preparing students for career success. Using a qualitative research design, I examine the pedagogical practices of accounting faculty teaching in the United States using data from 25 semi-structured interviews. I find that accounting faculty emphasise application and analysis HOTS more than evaluative and creative HOTS. This study offers insights into how minor adjustments to existing practices can facilitate students’ progression up Bloom's taxonomy (1956), fostering the development of evaluative and creative skills across various accounting sub-disciplines. Students’ mastery of evaluative and creative skill sets is critical to competency development and career success as emerging technologies already routinely apply and analyse data.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• evaluation
• creation
• higher-order thinking skills

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) is a web-based survey administered nationally to faculty, instructors, and graduate students who teach at U.S. baccalaureate degree-granting colleges and universities.’ The FSSE instructors who take the survey classify the percentage of time their courses emphasise application, analysis, evaluation, and creation skills. Faculty completing the FSSE survey answer many questions, from personal characteristics to specific educational practices employed in the classroom. Before answering the survey questions, faculty indicate their academic discipline and answer each survey question based only on one undergraduate course section they taught during the recent academic year. In the most recent FSSE survey reviewed at the time of the study, 428 accounting faculty answer four questions which state, ‘In the one-course section you selected, how much does the coursework emphasize: (1) applying facts, theories, or methods to practical problems or new situations; (2) analysing an idea, experience, or line of reasoning in depth by examining its parts; (3) evaluating a point of view, decision, or information source; and (4) forming a new idea or understanding from various pieces of information.' The response choices for each survey question include ‘very little,’ ‘some,’ ‘quite a bit,’ or ‘very much’ emphasis in the classroom.

2 All interviews were conducted in 2019.

3 Gibbs (2007) defines qualitative reliability as ‘the researcher’s approach is consistent across different researchers and procedures,’ and Creswell and Creswell (2017) defines validity as meaning the researcher ‘checks for accuracy of the findings by employing certain procedures’ (p. 251). Gibbs (2007) suggests that researchers check transcripts for apparent errors and ensure no drift during data coding to test reliability. To test validity, Creswell and Creswell (2017) suggests the following techniques: (1) member checking; (2) clarifying the bias the researcher brings to the study; (3) presenting discrepant information that runs counter to the theme; (4) spending prolonged time in the field; and (5) using peer debriefing. Therefore, I perform the following procedures to assess reliability and validity. First, I took detailed notes during the interviews and audio recorded each conversation to ensure that responses were captured accurately. After the interview, I manually transcribed the audio recording and compared the audio transcription to my handwritten notes. I sent a follow-up copy of my detailed, consolidated notes to each participant to confirm the information’s accuracy and allow the participant to add any additional insights that might have been missed. Second, as suggested by Creswell and Creswell (2017), I discussed and clarified with each interviewee the bias I brought to the study, including how the interpretation of the data is shaped by my background, which created an open and honest conversation. Third, during the data coding analysis, I followed Creswell and Creswell’s (2017) ‘traditional approach to allow codes to emerge only based on the data collected from the participants’ (p.248) and ‘consistently compared data with the codes, followed by writing memos about the codes and their definitions’ (p. 252) to ensure a code drift does not occur. Fourth, in this paper’s results and discussion section, I discuss discrepant information as ‘real life is composed of different perspectives, and discussing contrary information adds to the credibility of the information’ (Creswell & Creswell, 2017, p. 192). Lastly, as suggested by Creswell and Creswell (2017), I spend prolonged time in the teaching field and use peer debriefing to add further validity to this qualitative portion of the study.

4 Full Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was obtained from my institution before the interviews.

5 The detailed script is provided in Appendix A.

6 Thirty-nine percent of faculty included ‘critical thinking,’ and 36% included ‘evaluate’ in their responses.