Integrating accounting topics within or across functions: Effects on students’ structure and use of knowledge

Abstract

This study investigates whether students who learn accounting topics in courses organized by function (e.g., financial and managerial) structure their knowledge differently than students who learn the same topics in courses that integrate across functions. The study also examines whether students’ use of this knowledge depends on how subsequent test problems are structured. Results of a laboratory experiment indicate that the organization of topics affected how students structured their knowledge in memory. Further, when students subsequently solved test problems, recall of knowledge was superior on test problems that possessed a structure similar to students’ memory structures and inferior on test problems that were not similar to their memory structures. No recall differences were detected when students solved problems that did not favor a particular structure. Implications of the results for course design and student assessment are discussed.