International Education Standards: Towards a Transformative Educational Paradigm

This paper presents an exploratory six country study to determine whether capabilities and competences for professional accountants as prescribed by the International Accounting Education Standards Board of IFAC, are incorporated and developed within university accounting education. Set within a transformative [participative] approach to facilitating student learning rather than the more traditional transmissive [passive] paradigm, this paper investigates coverage of topics, and teaching methods of International Education Standards (IES) 2, 3 and 4. The results show that academics in the six countries: (i) prioritise topics differently; (ii) tend towards a transmissive perspective, where traditional lecture delivery dominates; (iii) and; (iv) vary in perception of the importance of educational theories associated with the transformative approach to learning. Thus, academics??? may not be espousing transformative education approaches to develop the capabilities and competences of IES 2, 3 and 4. We call for universities to address the need for a more transformative approach to undergraduate accounting education and for IAESB to develop processes to encourage educators to adopt the transformative practice they recommend in the IESs they pronounce.