Introductory Accounting, with Matrices, atthe Southern Federal University, Russia

Issues in Accounting Education. 2012. Vol. 27. No. 4. P. 1019–1044.

Высотская А. Б.

Within the context of the globalization of the practice and profession ofaccounting, it is increasingly important that accounting faculty and students are aware ofthe international accounting environment. In addition, the continued growth in the cross-national flows of students increases the need for accounting faculty to be aware ofinternational differences in the teaching and learning of accounting. This papercontributes to this arena by looking at the context, structure, and content of a successfulintroductory accounting course at a major university in the Russian Federation that usesmatrix accounting theory in its introductory accounting course. By doing so, the paperprovides accounting educators with a range of insights into the diversity of theinternational context of the teaching of accounting, and provides awareness of the theoryof matrix accounting and how and why this mathematical approach to the teaching ofintroductory accounting has been adopted. In addition, as part of the importantcontextual background, the paper provides a rich description of the course, which couldbe used for comparison with other introductory accounting courses.By looking at introductory accounting from a different perspective, the paper has thepotential to help and encourage accounting faculty to think afresh about our discipline byquestioning some of the taken-for-granted assumptions that underlie the approachesused in teaching accounting

Keywords: mathematics, curriculum, international, matrix accounting, introductory accounting