Critical thinking in accounting education: Status and call to action

Abstract

For many years, accounting education research has highlighted the need for students to develop stronger critical thinking skills. This need has become even more imperative as the accounting profession continues to transition, and entry-level accountants are expected to demonstrate stronger critical thinking skills earlier in their careers. In this paper, we revisit the higher education literature to identify key recommendations for accounting education to simultaneously develop desired critical thinking skills and accounting technical knowledge. Based on existing research in higher education, we recommend that accounting educators apply a model of cognitive development—the reflective judgment model—to better understand students’ thinking and to design and employ more effective learning activities. To encourage adoption of this approach, we summarize existing accounting education recommendations for improved critical thinking education. Although we believe that these recommendations are beneficial, we recognize that only limited accounting education research supports the ideas presented here. Accordingly, we propose calls to action for additional research in this area. Our students need for us to identify and adopt educational practices to generate graduates who have the critical thinking skills required by our rapidly-changing profession. To meet this need, researchers should actively engage in activities to fill the gap in empirical data about the development of students’ critical thinking skills throughout the accounting curriculum. Also, accounting departments and faculty need to support both educational research and improved learning design.