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Accounting Education
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The Interface between Academic Education and the Professional Training

of Accountants
Elaine Evans a;Roger Juchau b
a
Macquarie University, Australia b University of Western Sydney, Australia

First published on: 03 August 2009

To cite this Article Evans, Elaine andJuchau, Roger(2009) 'The Interface between Academic Education and the Professional
Training of Accountants', Accounting Education, 18: 4, 343 — 344, First published on: 03 August 2009 (iFirst)
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09639280902719309
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639280902719309

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 Accounting Education: an international journal
Vol. 18, Nos. 4– 5, 343– 344, September– December 2009

GUEST EDITORIAL

The Interface between Academic

Education and the Professional Training
of Accountants

This themed issue of AE features six articles which focus on ‘The interface between
academic education and professional training for accountants,’ which are among those
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submitted in response to the Call for Papers that is appended to this editorial. Interface
issues have always been contentious in the academic and professional literature. The
problems of linkage and closure between academic education and professional training
have new currency, given the present pressures from students and employers to move
accounting preparation to a more efficient, economic and practical basis. The expectations
of academics, students, employers and professional bodies struggle for alignment as
current university and professional employment conditions generate new pressures for
changing the academic and professional pathways for educational development.
The authors are from Scotland, Australia, Northern Ireland, New Zealand and South
Africa. Their research gives an international perspective on training, skills development,
graduate capabilities and performance. Research methods employed are largely interviews
and questionnaires, as well as analysis of research data using a range of techniques,
including statistical, content and categorical analysis.
Whilst one cannot draw valid generalisations from this set of research studies, it
nevertheless provides some insights into the knowledge, skills and attributes of future
accountants in a number of national settings and also into the training expectations held
by the profession, employers, academics and trainees. A number of studies reported
here are suited to replication in other national settings and then perhaps could generate
a stronger basis for theory-building in an area where research findings are frequently
tentative and localised.
All the papers have importance for national and international settings and illustrate the
complexities that training and education confront in preparing future accounting
professionals.
The Gallhofer, Haslam and Kamla paper focuses on accounting education, the
accountancy profession and the interrelationship between academia and accountants in
the Syrian context. Jackling and De Lange explore divergence and convergence between
what graduates feel is taught in Australian university courses, and the skills required for
career progression when compared with the skills employers are seeking in graduates.
Ballantine and Larres review the potency of cooperative learning for skills development
by comparing perceptions of skills enhancement between accounting students in Northern
Ireland who experienced traditional group learning and those who were engaged in coop-
erative learning. Wells et al. identify professional capabilities and skills in New Zealand

0963-9284 Print/1468-4489 Online/09/04– 50343–2 # 2009 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09639280902719309
 344 Editorial

graduates and explore the extent to which they are delivered in accounting programs.
Coetzee and Oberholzer undertake an exploratory study of the gap between tax knowledge
required of South African trainees and their ability to apply this knowledge in the
workplace. Finally, Gammie and Joyce discuss the issues in relation to work-based
assessment and outline changes made to competency-based approaches adopted in the
training of Scottish chartered accountants.
The articles serve to amplify the challenge of gaining a sounder understanding of
knowledge and skill development in accounting and the problems and tensions arising
from the interface between the profession, the workplace and accounting educators.

Elaine Evans
Macquarie University, Australia
and
Roger Juchau
University of Western Sydney, Australia
Guest Editors
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