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Differences in accounting students' perceptions of their development of generic skills and emotional intelligence in a heterogeneous classroom

Aspiring professional accountants need to develop certain competencies comprising
both technical knowledge and professional skills (also referred to as generic skills),
during their initial professional development (IPD). However, despite interventions to
develop these competencies, there is still a gap between employers' expectations and
graduates' competencies. It has been argued that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) may be
the missing link in the IPD of professional accountants. It has been suggested that
instructors should adopt specific non-traditional pedagogical approaches to develop
professional skills and EQ. The effectiveness of these approaches may, however, be
compromised by the diversity in the classroom. Instructors should take cognisance of
the demographic differences of the individuals within the student group and the impact
of these differences on the development of professional skills and EQ, when selecting
the pedagogical approaches. Instructors should also take cognisance of the interaction
between demographic variables within the demographic groups. This dissertation
explored demographic differences in students' perceptions of the professional skills
developed at the end of their IPD. Statistically significant differences were noted
between different demographic groups of students on whether they have developed
professional skills. This dissertation further explored the differences in EQ between
demographic groups of students. Statistically significant differences were not only
noted in EQ between these demographic groups of students but also within these
demographic groups. Although this dissertation considers South African students, the
results may be of interest to other multicultural and multilingual environments,
particularly environments that have a history of socio-economic inequity and racial
injustice. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Accounting / MCom / Unrestricted

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/60497
Date January 2016
CreatorsKirstein, Marina
ContributorsCoetzee, Stephen, marina.kirstein@up.ac.za, Schmulian, Astrid
PublisherUniversity of Pretoria
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
Rights© 2017 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

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