Ronald William Perrin

Reflexivity in Learning Critical Accounting : Implications for Teaching and its Research Nexus

Abstract We explore our responses to our students’ use of self-reflective journals in an accounting theory subject. Being reflexive during our writing process gave us insights into our students’ learning, our teaching and the role these have in research. In restructuring our conversations and putting them into an accessible and publishable form, we created and exposed a number of paradoxes. In particular, the presentation of a cohesive narrative text, masked the ideologies and conflicts imbedded in the text we were synthesizing which was the antithesis of what we were trying to achieve in teaching critical accounting. Recognition of such paradoxes made us reflexive of our relationship to students and how this impinges on our roles as researchers. The negotiations and compromises of our power which students may have experienced in the student/teacher relationship can be echoed in the researcher/editor relationship. Whilst we acknowledge these relationships as confronting and oppressive we also argue that these processes can be emancipatory for the students, as well as for us. As teachers and researchers, reflexivity about our students’ engagement in their learning of critical accounting can inform the nexus between teaching and research. Ultimately, the purpose of learning and teaching critical accounting is to expose the conflicts, ideologies and complexities imbedded in accounting practice and not replicate them in the education process.

Deconstructing an accounting paradigm shift: AASB 116 non-current asset measurement models

This paper is a deconstruction of the cost and fair value models implicit in the Australian Accounting Standard (AASB 116), derived from the International Accounting Standard IAS 16. The paper examines the justification for the paradigm shift through the lens of the very framework that supports each accounting model. The analysis renders visible the contradictions embedded in the models, raising serious doubts about the ability of either model to provide financial information that is sufficiently relevant or reliable to be any more useful to potential users than the historical cost model that they have usurped. In this regard the standard fails to provide any benefits to warrant the paradigm shift.