Rethinking accounting assessment in a COVID-19 world: application of a dialogical approach

ABSTRACT

While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the higher education sector, it also provided opportunities for accounting academics to rethink their assessment strategy. This paper adds to the limited literature which has reported on how accounting academics responded to such an opportunity. Drawing on Freire’s dialogical education theory as the theoretical underpinning, we provide an autoethnographic account of an academic’s experience of championing a dialogical informed assessment. Focusing on assessment, this autoethnographic study contributes to the growing dialogic pedagogy accounting education literature and challenges accounting academics to consider engaging in an open-book portfolio assessment informed by the dialogical education approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Assessment
• autoethnography
• dialogical
• pandemic
• accounting education
• Freire

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge comments received from two referees and the Associate Editor of Accounting Education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The financial accounting module, combined with other programme modules on the accounting degree programme, contribute to exemptions from some professional accounting bodies’ (PAB) examinations.

2 Virtual learning environment platforms such as Blackboard have a built-in open board discussion forum function which can be used for submission of assessment when, for example, building a portfolio of evidence. The function also has a range of features that help to manage task availability and the marking process.

3 Based on positive feedback, the dialogical informed assessment will continue to be used in future academic years on the financial accounting 1st year accounting module.