Accountants Use Of Liberal Education In Professional Practice

This book presents the views of accounting educators, accounting education policy-makers, and accounting practitioners from across the world on the challenging topic of liberalising the accounting curriculum within university education. Accounting is a relatively new subject within universities and has been absorbed into a high level of education without any real attempt to do so within the traditional ethos of a liberal arts education. In this book, the logic of teaching using the liberal arts is described and contrasted with the practical vocational training approach of teaching which has formed the foundation of accountancy courses for many years. A proposal to change this established practice, by integrating the liberal arts into the university accounting curriculum, is followed by a series of short chapters which address the relevance, validity and worthiness of the proposed approach. Comments and counter-arguments are then discussed before further chapters illustrate how the proposed change may be achieved in a variety of different contexts – ranging from that of the global financial crisis (which began in 2008) to the inclusion of ethics and sustainability within the accounting curriculum. This book will aid those teaching accounting in universities to improve the design of their accounting degree programmes by moving away from an excessive emphasis on technical skills towards a broader consideration of a liberal contextualisation of the accounting curriculum. This book was originally published as a special issue of Accounting Education: an international journal.

A compilation drawn from over 500 years of English language accounting literature reflecting a lifetime of scholarly enquiry, this book comprises over 5000 quotations of between 1-20 lines in length. The book aims to give an historical perspective as well as an up-to-date overview of what accounting and accountants were, are and do, and is intended both as a reference book and a research tool. Its range extends from general interest to the advanced, covering rules, practices and standards, professional and academic opinions, and the social and logical foundations of accounting; it also draws on the work of scholars in other fields that have some bearing on accounting work and thought.

Accounting, often described as "the language of business", requires a diverse set of written, listening and oral communication skills if those who practise it are to be effective. Given the pace of change relating to, for example, the evolution of international accounting standards and the demands for greater transparency, accountants must be clear, responsive, and audience-focussed communicators. Employers of accountants consistently comment on the need for their new graduate recruits and trainees to have strong written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills. In this light accounting educators face the challenge of designing and delivering programmes that reflect professional expectations on the part of employers and clients, and educating students on how to make informed communication choices in order to achieve desired results and to build good working relationships. The chapters in this book deal with such topics as accounting students’ perceptions of oral communication skills; competence-based writing skills; and the development of listening skills. This book was originally published as Accounting Education: an international journal.

Many enquiries into the state of accounting education/training, undertaken in several countries over the past 40 years, have warned that it must change if it is to be made more relevant to students, to the accounting profession, and to stakeholders in the wider community. This book’s over-riding aim is to provide a comprehensive and authoritative source of reference which defines the domain of accounting education/training, and which provides a critical overview of the state of this domain (including emerging and cutting edge issues) as a foundation for facilitating improved accounting education/training scholarship and research in order to enhance the educational base of accounting practice. The Routledge Companion to Accounting Education highlights the key drivers of change - whether in the field of practice on the one hand (e.g. increased regulation, globalisation, risk, and complexity), or from developments in the academy on the other (e.g. pressures to embed technology within the classroom, or to meet accreditation criteria) on the other. Thirty chapters, written by leading scholars from around the world, are grouped into seven themed sections which focus on different facets of their respective themes – including student, curriculum, pedagogic, and assessment considerations.

Business is the largest undergraduate major in the United States and still growing. This reality, along with the immense power of the business sector and its significance for national and global well-being, makes quality education critical not only for the students themselves but also for the public good. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's national study of undergraduate business education found that most undergraduate programs are too narrow, failing to challenge students to question assumptions, think creatively, or understand the place of business in larger institutional contexts. Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education examines these limitations and describes the efforts of a diverse set of institutions to address them by integrating the best elements of liberal arts learning with business curriculum to help students develop wise, ethically grounded professional judgment.

This book presents the views of accounting educators, accounting education policy-makers, and accounting practitioners from across the world on the challenging topic of liberalising the accounting curriculum within university education. Accounting is a relatively new subject within universities and has been absorbed into a high level of education without any real attempt to do so within the traditional ethos of a liberal arts education. In this book, the logic of teaching using the liberal arts is described and contrasted with the practical vocational training approach of teaching which has formed the foundation of accountancy courses for many years. A proposal to change this established practice, by integrating the liberal arts into the university accounting curriculum, is followed by a series of short chapters which address the relevance, validity and worthiness of the proposed approach. Comments and counter-arguments are then discussed before further chapters illustrate how the proposed change may be achieved in a variety of different contexts – ranging from that of the global financial crisis (which began in 2008) to the inclusion of ethics and sustainability within the accounting curriculum. This book will aid those teaching accounting in universities to improve the design of their accounting degree programmes by moving away from an excessive emphasis on technical skills towards a broader consideration of a liberal contextualisation of the accounting curriculum. This book was originally published as a special issue of Accounting Education: an international journal.