THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT WE TEACH AND WHAT STUDENTS UNDERSTAND. WORK IN PROGRESS - A SURVEY BASED APPROACH OF ACCOUNTING CONCEPTS
Autor (i): Conf. univ. dr. Anca Bratu, Conf. univ. dr. Camelia Cojocaru
JEL: M41, M13
Cuvinte cheie: accounting, mental representations, improving teaching of accounting, improving businesses and competitiveness, entrepreneurship
Abstract:
The Economic Higher Education has become at the core of the Romanian Higher Education after 1990, with a significant inflation in the number of specializations across the country. Being a good economist became the key of getting a quick insertion on the labour market. One of the most difficult courses taught in the first year of study by all the economic faculties in Romania is accounting, a discipline equally recognized as challenging as useful. Accounting is not only about understanding the basic stuff in economic education, but also about being able to look deeper into the more profound economic features of a job. Previous research documented that academic courses could help the students towards entrepreneurship, through an integration of process approach, illustrating business operations with real accounting documents and bookkeeping. Despite its valuable contribution in practice, Accounting is however rejected by students most of the time, arguing that learning accounting is boring, and being an accountant is not a matter of high social status. Based on a teaching experience of 15 years, the authors first emphasise the difficulties the students face when confronted with terms like share capital, fixed capital, working capital, double registration and double representation, reserves, in the sense of associating them with the right category. The study has been conducted with the final aim of improving the teaching of such concepts and eventually raising the quality of the educational process. Based on a sample of 150 students affiliated with the Faculty of Administration and Business, University of Bucharest and methodologies previously implemented by Saemann & Crooker and Svenson & Nilsson, we measure the differences between what an accounting teacher expects students to know after introducing a number of basic concepts and what students receive as meaning as those concepts.
The Economic Higher Education has become at the core of the Romanian Higher Education after 1990, with a significant inflation in the number of specializations across the country. Being a good economist became the key of getting a quick insertion on the labour market. One of the most difficult courses taught in the first year of study by all the economic faculties in Romania is accounting, a discipline equally recognized as challenging as useful. Accounting is not only about understanding the basic stuff in economic education, but also about being able to look deeper into the more profound economic features of a job. Previous research documented that academic courses could help the students towards entrepreneurship, through an integration of process approach, illustrating business operations with real accounting documents and bookkeeping. Despite its valuable contribution in practice, Accounting is however rejected by students most of the time, arguing that learning accounting is boring, and being an accountant is not a matter of high social status. Based on a teaching experience of 15 years, the authors first emphasise the difficulties the students face when confronted with terms like share capital, fixed capital, working capital, double registration and double representation, reserves, in the sense of associating them with the right category. The study has been conducted with the final aim of improving the teaching of such concepts and eventually raising the quality of the educational process. Based on a sample of 150 students affiliated with the Faculty of Administration and Business, University of Bucharest and methodologies previously implemented by Saemann & Crooker and Svenson & Nilsson, we measure the differences between what an accounting teacher expects students to know after introducing a number of basic concepts and what students receive as meaning as those concepts.
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