Adoption of active methodologies and their relationship with the life cycle and the qualifications of teaching staff in undergraduate courses in accounting

Abstract

The objective of this study is to identify and analyze the relationship between the adoption of active methodologies and the teaching life cycle and qualifications of teachers in undergraduate courses in accounting. Thus, a diagnosis is presented regarding the adoption of active methodologies by undergraduate accounting teachers in Brazil, based on the life cycle and qualifications of teaching staff. This study offers a diagnostic tool for teaching staff to support the adoption of active methodologies in the context of teaching accounting, which is affected by the demand for new pedagogical practices to develop soft skills, something that is scarcely addressed in the related literature. Because this adoption depends, in particular, on the teacher’s willingness, investigating factors related to teachers enables it to be identified how much they are likely to adopt active methodologies. As a research strategy, an online questionnaire was used, as well as descriptive and variance analysis (ANOVA) to treat the data. The study presents the evidence that the teaching life cycle, pedagogical qualifications, and professional qualifications are positively related to the adoption of active methodologies, while academic qualifications are negatively related to this adoption. Thus, three contributions of this study can be mentioned: institutional, personal, and academic. At the institutional level, it offers decision makers at higher education institutions (HEIs) a tool capable of supporting the implementation of active methodologies, while enabling faculty performance diagnoses to be carried out, identifying the teachers who are more and less likely to adopt active methods. At the personal level, it highlights the need for teachers to keep up to date in terms of new pedagogical practices, in which hard skills and soft skills are developed. At the academic level, it contributes by providing the literature with results on the themes involved.