Review of the Initiatives of the Accounting Education Change Commission from the Perspective of Curriculum Orientation

In 1989, the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the then big-8 accounting firms formed the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC). In general, universities were under pressure to alter their educational approaches to meet the demands of market. However, literature indicates that little research has been done on accounting curriculum development. This paper aims to discuss accounting education proposed by AECC from the curriculum perspective. First, this paper presents a brief account of accounting education reform initiated by AECC. Second, it constructs a theoretical framework pertaining to curriculum that is used to analyze the eight initiatives of AECC accounting reform. Then, it goes into an in-depth analysis for the accounting reform from the curriculum orientation perspective. Finally, this paper presents a brief conclusion for the way forward on accounting reform. In brief, this paper offers three observations: (a) It is worthwhile to view the accounting reform from the curriculum perspective, (b) the eight initiatives reflect three of the five curriculum orientations, namely academic rationalist, cognitive process and social and economic efficiency, in different degrees, and (c) with very few exceptions, scholars are of the view that all positions adopted of the eight initiatives are highly supportable. Viewing from curriculum perspectives, the initiatives show academic rationalist, cognitive process and social and economic efficiency orientations.