Accounting Education and Sustainability

Dr David Yates leads this project, with input from collaborators both within Sheffield University and externally. The aims of the project are to question practices of accounting education and how accounting is presented to students and wider audiences, and to promote criticality in this area.

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Project description

Ask most people to describe accounting as a discipline and you’ll probably be met with responses such as: “oh it’s all maths”, or “you have to be good with numbers”. While this is in part true, accounting serves a much wider purpose that these relatively narrow descriptions, forming a complex social practice where behaviour is not only shaped by accounting practices, but too shapes them in itself.

This project explores accounting as a social practice by reflection on the role of accounting within society. Taking a critical approach, it considers problems with how accounting education is practised, and how accounting is viewed by students and tutors alike. Positions on accounting within wider ideology are considered and challenged, with alternatives proposed and evaluated.

Key research outputs

Yates D & Al Mahameed M (2023) This is not an exit: accounting education and attempting to escape the capitalist realist “cage”. Accounting Research Journal, 36(6), 515-538.
Letiche H, De Loo I, Lowe A & Yates D (2023) Meeting the research(er) and the researched halfway. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 94, 102452-102452.
Gebreiter F, Davies M, Finley S, Gee L, Weaver L & Yates D (2018) From ‘rock stars’ to ‘hygiene factors’: Teachers at private accountancy tuition providers. Accounting History, 23(1-2), 138-150.
Lee B, Yates D & Lieberman M (2024) Aspirational intellectual ontological positions, de facto ontological positions and felt accountability: autoethnographic narratives from two early career researchers In Letiche H, De Loo I, Moriceau J-L & Cordery C (Ed.), Accountability Research Ethnographic Methods in Organisation and Accounting Routledge
Yates D (2023) Making the case for theory in the accounting classroom: invoking the self when teaching accounting and accountability, Business Teaching Beyond Silos (pp. 99-108). Edward Elgar Publishing
Yates D (2021) Why so serious? The role of non-serious games in sparking educational curiosity: a reflection In Elliott C, Guest J & Vettraino E (Ed.), Games, Simulations and Playful Learning in Business Education (pp. 23-34). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Yates D & De Loo I (2021) Jeux Sans Frontières? A critical angle on the use of games/simulations and ‘play’ in higher education In Elliott C, Guest J & Vettaraino E (Ed.), Games, Simulations and Playful Learning in Business Education (pp. 226-237). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.