AAA Spark Meeting of Regions

Encouraging Students to Explore Controversial Questions Underlying Accounting as a Social Practice

• In Event: Increasing Student Participation in Online and Live Classrooms, Integrating Data Analytics into the Accounting Curriculum: Incorporating Computerized Practical Learning Components

Abstract

What good does it do to provide students with answers if they have not grappled with basic questions about the relationship between businesses and society? Over-emphasis on teaching toward certification exam runs the risk of teaching students correct answers to yesterday's problems. This presentation will share readings and other activities that encourage students to explore the gray areas where no answer has yet been determined, or where the old answers are no longer working.

As a formative rather than a summative practice, readings and other activities provide a space in which students are encouraged to question foundational assumptions and pregnant silences in cost accounting textbooks and conventional professional literature. Targeted readings and reflection activities 1) highlight gradebooks as a form of social control, 2) point up the contested beginnings of Taylorism, 3) raise questions about forms of control in the modern surveillance society, and 4)culminate in student analysis of a controversial topic in relation to a weighing mechanism crafted to embody their normative ideals. The overarching goal is to help students recognize the connection between accounting practice and the fabric of society. The materials can be adapted for undergraduate or master's level courses.

Author

• Louella J Moore, Washburn University School of Business