Transforming educational practice for a transformed employment environment

Hong Kong Conventional & Exhibition Centre

Major transformations in the globalised management accounting profession have put pressure on accounting educators to produce ‘employment-ready’ graduates with a range of communication-related skills. Many past efforts to develop undergraduates’ communication skills have been compromised by curriculum designers’ reductive approach to ‘communication’ and the tendency to teach communication skills in isolation from or as an adjunct to the discourse of professional accounting rather than as an already integral element. This paper critiques two models for teaching communication skills within accounting programs, and then presents an alternative, ‘discursive’ model. It outlines features of this ‘discursive model’ through reference to a case study.