A method and resources to support accounting students to think critically

Author

Martin Turner - Victoria University of Wellington

Date - March 2011

Executive summary

This project was funded by Ako Aotearoa and initiated by a Victoria University of Wellington staff member to develop a suite of Excel spreadsheets to support the use of individualised, authentic assessed learning tasks with regular formative feedback to be used (as part of an integrated set of interventions) in undergraduate and MBA financial statements analysis courses.

The author has previously conducted research projects examining the impact of a set of integrated interventions (supported by an earlier, more simplified version of the spreadsheets) on the way students learn in accounting courses at university and on the necessary cognitive preconditions for developing critical thinking skills. A key finding of this research is that assessments that are individualised (that is, different for each student), authentic (that is, deal with the real world) and involve regular formative feedback as part of an integrated set of interventions, support accounting students to experience high-level relevance structure, high-level conception of learning, intrinsic motivation and deep learning as necessary preconditions to develop their critical thinking skills. Drawing on this previous research, the spreadsheets developed in this project are specifically designed to support the use of such assessments in financial statement analysis courses to support both change in the way students experience how they learn in an accounting course at university and the development of critical thinking skills.

Preliminary findings of this previous research have been published and are encouraging (Turner, 2009). The research findings from use of a previous version of the spreadsheets are discussed later in this report. The author has recently submitted his PhD in Accounting Education based on this previous research. A ‘plain English’ version of the author’s PhD thesis is available from the author as an unpublished manuscript, Experience of Learning (Turner, 2011).

Although the author has not as yet had the opportunity to research the use of the new spreadsheets in financial statement analysis courses, it is anticipated that the significantly improved versions of the spreadsheets completed as a result of this project have the potential to improve the effectiveness of teaching practice using individualised, authentic assessments in financial statement analysis courses in our business schools; and to support further research in this area.

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