An Inter-Institutional Exploration of the Learning Approaches of Students Studying Accounting

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the learning approaches of students taking their first course in accounting at a United States or an Irish university. The data for this study was gathered from 204 students in the U.S. and 309 in Ireland, using the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (ASSIST, 1997) which measures learning approaches on three dimensions: deep, strategic, and surface. The analysis reveals that while both samples favor a strategic approach over the other approaches, the U.S. students have a significantly higher score on the deep and strategic scales compared to the Irish students. Differences between the samples at the subscale level--such as students' intrinsic interest, time management, and fear of failure--are also reported. Finally, the study contextualizes the findings by analyzing variations in the learning environment of the two universities. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)