Publishing and utilizing relevant research in accounting: The impact on the perception of effective teaching

Abstract

Prior research that attempts to empirically correlate research activity and effective teaching generates conflicting results. These contradictory findings contribute to the scrutiny that currently threatens to undermine accounting education and to impact funds currently directed toward the support of accounting research. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of relevant research on students’ perceptions of effective teaching. This two-phase study incorporates both a between-subjects decision-making experiment and a ranking instrument to measure the importance of various faculty attributes of teaching effectiveness. The two factors of interest in this study are whether a hypothetical accounting professor (1) conducts and publishes relevant research and (2) incorporates relevant research into classroom lectures. The results of the first phase of the study experimentally demonstrate that students enrolled in accounting classes perceive the professor who does both (conducts and publishes relevant research and incorporates research into classroom lectures) to be significantly more effective than others. Specifically, the study identifies a statistically significant two-way interaction between the two factors of interest. This suggests that students perceive the professor's research to be a component of teaching effectiveness if, and only if, that research is incorporated into the classroom experience of the student. The second phase of the study finds that students generally rank both of the faculty research attributes lower in importance than other previously identified factors used to describe the professor.

Citation

Miller, K.C., Stocks, M.H. and Proctor, T.Y. (2010), "Publishing and utilizing relevant research in accounting: The impact on the perception of effective teaching", Catanach, A.H. and Feldmann, D. (Ed.) Advances in Accounting Education (Advances in Accounting Education, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 221-246. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1085-4622(2010)0000011013