Making the invisible visible: practical applications of visual metaphors in teaching and learning accounting

Abstract

Current accounting graduates will be engaged in a constantly changing and visual world, and educators can help them by harnessing the power of visual metaphors. This article illustrates how hand-drawings by student groups can reveal negative perceptions of accountants as a potential career choice for new students, making such perceptions something to overcome. In addition, it shows how drawings can make novel and complex concepts more accessible for novice learners. The article demonstrates that student-generated drawings can be a tool to identify and dispel misconceptions in the learning of accounting. Finally, the article shows how drawings can aid in the teaching of difficult accounting concepts. Visual metaphor is a powerful interdisciplinary communication skill that is necessary in the field of accounting reporting. Educators and their students benefit from using hand drawing as active learning for developing visual intelligence in the field of accounting.

Keywords:

• Visual metaphor
• accountant
• accounting
• active learning
• hand drawing
• learning styles

Notes

Disclosure statement

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

Acknowledgements

The author thanks her students who participated in the project and shared both their drawings and their honest perceptions about accounting. The author is grateful to the editor as well as the two peer reviewers who provided helpful comments and suggestions that have made this essay stronger.

Notes

1 Visual methods have been used successfully in such diverse postsecondary academic fields as health (Radley & Taylor, 2003; Wright & Shah, 2011), psychiatric training (Alyami et al., 2016), childhood development (Rasmussen, 2004), social sciences (Prosser & Loxley, 2008), and artificial intelligence (Einsfeld, Ebert, Kerren, & Deller, 2009). Other applications include teacher education (Avgerinou, 2011; Taylor, 2002), medical pathology (Kanthan & Mills, 2006), surgery (Wright & Shah, 2011), and science education (Ainsworth, Prain, & Tytler, 2011).

2 I have received the Augustana College’s Institutional Research Board (IRB) approval and student consent to collect and analyze these drawings for scholarly publication.

3 Joe Hoyle is an inspiring and innovative teacher, recipient of AAA/J. Michael and Mary Anne Cook/Deloitte Foundation Prize in 2015. Example used with Professor Hoyle’s permission.

4 Only the basic changes in equity are discussed in the introductory accounting courses.