Development of Generic Competencies: Impact of a Mixed Teaching Approach on Students' Perceptions

Abstract

Accounting education in recent years has emphasized the need for developing generic competencies and, to this end, has advocated various pedagogies other than the traditional lecture format. The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Canada) started an award-winning program, Vire, Tuelle & Associates (VTA), which uses a mixed teaching approach to develop students' generic competencies in preparation for the Chartered Accountant designation. This questionnaire-based study asked students to rate this approach at the end of their training in the mock firm (VTA) and while they were trainees in an accounting firm. It also asked the office supervisors to assess their trainees' competency levels during the training period. It was found that the mixed approach program significantly enhanced the development/improvement of all 32 generic competencies investigated. After a few months' work as CA trainees, students had not substantially changed their views of the usefulness of VTA activities for the development of their competencies. Students' perceptions of some benefits of the mixed approach differed significantly according to accounting work experience and prior academic performance. The office supervisors generally viewed the UQTR trainees as being highly competent or excellent. This study provides educators, schools and professional accounting bodies with feedback on the mixed approach to help them develop similar programs.

Keywords:

• CA candidates' competency map
• mixed teaching approach
• perceived usefulness
• pervasive or generic competencies
• students' perceptions
• supervisors' perceptions

Acknowledgments

Sylvain Durocher's and Antonello Callimaci's comments on earlier drafts of this paper are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

In 2007, more than 234 cases had been written. They are available to program instructors on the program's web site.

The Uniform Evaluation is held over a three-day period. On the first day, a five-hour examination on one global multidisciplinary case is administered. On each of the following days, a four-hour examination on three or four multidisciplinary cases is administered.

The first version of the CA Candidates' Competency Map was produced for the 2003 uniform evaluation. The map is updated annually, with most of the changes impacting specific competencies.

Depending on the year, between 5% and 8% of students who write the uniform examination in the Province of Quebec are UQTR students.

Working in teams can give students the opportunity to develop their oral skills by defending their ideas. This skill relates to one aspect of the fourth professional skill, ‘Shares information and opinions through discussions and presentations’ (see Table 1).

Several questions were clarified and two questions from Weil et al. (2004) were dropped because students noted similarities with other questions (as evidenced by a very high correlation between both types of questions). The pre-test used a Likert scale of five for one group and seven for the other. The latter was retained as it allowed significantly more variance in the answers.

Quebec students have to take a two-year general course or a three-year technical program in CEGEP after finishing high school and before entering university.

One supervisor had three students to supervise and provided separate evaluations for each of them.

Ethical behaviour relates to personal values and can therefore be combined with personal attributes.

Strategic thinking is defined as the ability to perform an insightful analysis reflecting knowledge of the entity and leading to enhanced decision-making and/or the improvement of organisational performance.

Seven competencies were mentioned only once, while nine competencies were each mentioned twice. Three students mentioned the ability to facilitate group processes, and five, the ability to express ideas articulately in an oral presentation.

That students had a very positive teamwork experience during VTA activities was evident in the means of the eight questions related to group work, all of which were significantly higher than the mid-point of moderately satisfied on a scale of one to seven (t-tests, results not presented). Availability, contribution and participation of team members in meetings were quite satisfactory; however, quality of communication seems to have been somewhat less so. Students were satisfied with the quality and contribution of the team members' assignments in report writing and with their overall contribution to the work.

The extraction method was the principal component analysis. The rotation method used was varimax with Kaiser normalization.

Overall, the standardized alpha coefficients obtained for the seven factors are considered sufficient and reliable for a study of this nature (Nunnally, 1978).

As in Weil et al. (2004), there were no significant differences (P ≤ 0.05) on the subscales according to gender (not tabulated). Weil et al. (2001), however, obtained differences according to gender on two of their eight subscales. Contrary to Weil et al. (2004), there were no significant differences on the subscales according to age (not tabulated).

Supervisors' perceptions of trainee competency did not differ according to gender, age, prior work experience in accounting, or cumulative average (not tabulated).

There was a significant relationship between relative rankings and cumulative averages (not tabulated). Trainees with above-average cumulative averages were always ranked as above average in comparison to their peers, while below-average novices were usually ranked average in comparison.