Learning, students’ skills and learning technologies (old and new) in the development of accounting education

This submission represents a journey of learning about learning within accounting education, and, in particular, the role of learning technologies and students’ skills in the process of learning. The work presented was published over the past decade and a half and addresses issues concerned with accounting education both past and present, and includes research on the author of the first printed text on double entry bookkeeping, Fra’ Luca Pacioli. The overriding research interest at the core of this submission and which has guided the various and varied phases and themes within in it is a concern to learn from how learning technologies are and have been an integral part of the educational environment, and to gain insight into how learning technologies might best be utilised in the field of accounting education. The work is presented in two themes with an additional two publications related to methodological approach. The first theme is related to students’ skills and technology and the second theme includes historical research into early accounting education. The published work in these themes is predominantly represented by research published in leading refereed journals in the fields of accounting education and accounting history. The additional two publications are included as they relate to and illustrate the methodological approaches that underlie the overall approach to the research that is presented and developed in the two themes: an approach that privileges, as far as practical, subjects’ contextual understandings of their worlds. Given the diversity of the work included in this submission there is no single research question and there are a diverse range of contributions. The work included contributes to our understanding of the introduction and utilisation of learning technologies in the teaching of accounting, both printed books in the 15th century and Information Technology (IT) in the late 20th/early 21st centuries, and the skills required to facilitate learning within the discipline of accounting. The practical value and importance of the research is supported by, inter alia, reference to the author’s applied work (not part of the submission) that illustrates how the published work contributes to good practice in skills development and the introduction and integration of learning technologies in the accounting curriculum. The papers on IT skills adds to our understanding of the IT skills that students bring with them to university, and raises awareness of the need to challenge the taken for granted assumptions about the abilities of new generations of students. The work on generic skills, whilst showing the importance of skills development also highlights the complexities in this area particularly in relation to issues concerned with confidence in making choices, in the subject matter, via modelling choices, and in time management: not knowing what to do, what to study. The paper on matrix accounting in a Russian university illustrates the potential of an approach to accounting education that is facilitated by the use of IT based learning. The work on Pacioli contributes significantly to our knowledge and understanding of Pacioli as a pioneer in the field of accounting education, and the role of his writing within Summa in the education, development and spread of double entry bookkeeping and accounting, in particular by relating the works to literature in fields such as renaissance art, educational systems and social development. In contrast, the sole authored work on Pacioli concentrates on an element of the minutiae of the bookkeeping process, the accounting for goods inventory, traces the longevity of this method of recording transactions, and shows how this had potential to provide important decision information to merchants, who were the prime market for Pacioli’s writing at the time. The two themes addressed in this submission include works that have individually made unique and significant contributions to the fields of accounting education and accounting history, and the two publications included to illustrate the methodological approach have made a contribution methodologically and to the finance literature. Taken together the works presented also provide a significant and original contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the role of learning technologies in accounting education and, by investigating new learning technologies in the different periods of time, provide a platform for further research to help us to appreciate the importance of technologies in accounting, and in accounting education