The artistry of international accounting case pedagogy

Although international accounting case pedagogy has frequently been associated with the Harvard Business School, one can trace the origins of case based reasoning to the earliest revealed scriptures.2 This chapter provides details about the case method in a graduate international accounting course designed for relatively mature students. Although the case approach can be used in almost any course, it works best in a stylized setting where students have some work experience so that they can make the most out of the cases. Case pedagogy also demands that the instructor be flexible in terms of the format of the class so that, depending on the case and the participants in the class, the direction of the discussions can vary. Since most well written Harvard cases do not lead to one correct answer only, there is an ambiguity built into most cases by design that provides a basis for rich interaction among the case participants. © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved