A Look Inside Action Research: Driving Reform in Accounting Education and Development of Accounting Educators

• In Event: Teaching, Learning and Curriculum 1

Abstract

Action research is a systematic and iterative method that accounting educators have used to improve teaching practices, develop course assignments and implement curriculum change. Accounting educators can learn to be action researchers by doing action research. This paper looks inside an action research project that created a new group assignment for a large-enrollment introductory accounting course and developed the associated assessment practice. The paper introduces first-person inquiry, a meta-methodological approach that aims to provide useful, more general understandings of the dynamics and processes of action research. First-person inquiry examines how the skills or methods used by the action researcher encourage the researcher to adopt appropriately inquisitive attitudes, take actions that are informed and well-founded, and to assess the effect of the actions taken. The reported inquiry focuses on a reflection method that explicitly integrated writing and reading of research literature throughout an action research project. Reflection is central to action research. The reported first-person inquiry illustrates how reflection in action research supports change in an accounting education context and simultaneously promotes professional development of the accounting educator/action researcher.

Author

• Susan M Curtis, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign