Accounting Faculty Perceptions of The Influence Of Educational And Work Experiences On Their Performance As Educators

Abstract

Over the past quarter of a century there have been a number of calls for changes in accounting education with ramifications for the knowledge, skills, and abilities required of accounting educators to be effective both in the classroom and in the discharge of their other academic responsibilities. To assess this issue from a faculty member’s perspective, the authors randomly surveyed 1,200 doctoral-qualified accounting faculty members from Hasselback’s Accounting Faculty Directory as to the relative influence of specific educational and work experiences in developing these competencies. The authors received 241 (20%) usable responses within the allotted timeframe. Freidman two-way analyses of variance and Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were utilized to assess the relative importance of specific experiences in the attainment of each ability, as well as respondents’ reported success in attaining each ability. The results indicate that work experience was more influential on teaching effectiveness than was graduate education while doctoral education was most influential on the ability to conduct research. The authors also discuss other notable findings and their implications.