TWO YEARS’ INVESTIGATION INTO THE SELF-EFFICACY OF STUDENTS TAKING FINANCIAL AND MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING COURSE IN UNDERGRADUATE MANAGEMENT DEGREE PROGRAMMES

This paper presents an investigation into the effectiveness of teaching Financial and Management Accounting to management students at the University of York, England. It uses data collected from students in two consecutive academic years, 2008 and 2009. The work is part of a three-year PhD research project that aims to initially establish and validate a scale measurement for self-efficacy in accounting and finance taught as part of University degree programmes. The PhD Research project then uses this measure to investigate the effectiveness of different teaching methods and student engagement activities to develop a better understanding of how educators can build self-efficacy in their student. Pre- and Post- delivery questionnaires were used to collect data for a 9-week duration course. A student identifier was used to link pre- and post- questionnaires to the same student and of the 203 completed questionnaires received, 56 (27.6%) could be matched.
In addition to asking questions that would support the development of the self-efficacy scale, questions were also asked about the student’s general background, past study experience, work experience, engagement with activities (society, club or business related competition), career intention and exposure to role models. These additional questions provide the data to explore what it is the affects the students accounting and finance self-efficacy and how it develops during the course.
This paper contains the background to the project, a brief review of relevant literature, the methodology and results obtained so far. Moreover, the initial comments on implications for educators in this area also emphasizes, including a number of options for management undergraduate educators, not only in teaching a financial and management accounting course, but also in general life-long learning for management undergraduates.