Accounting seminar: "Income - The ultimate threshold concept in accounting education" by Dr Frederico Botafogo

Date:
Location: AUT City Campus
WF Building, 610
Auckland CBD
Auckland 1010
New Zealand
Contact: accountingseminars@aut.ac.nz
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Accounting seminar: "Income - The ultimate threshold concept in accounting education" by Dr Frederico Botafogo 09/17/2018 11:00 09/17/2018 12:00 AuthorDr. Frederico Botafogo – School of Business, Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill, New ZealandAbstractThreshold Concepts is an emerging st AUT City Campus, WF Building, 610, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010, New Zealand

Author

Dr. Frederico Botafogo – School of Business, Southern Institute of Technology, Invercargill, New Zealand

Abstract

Threshold Concepts is an emerging strand in the Higher Education literature. Among other things, it assumes academic experts, say accounting educators, often take for granted some concepts that define their discipline. The Threshold Concepts literature claims that identifying these concepts helps universities review courses and design programmes to mitigate the conceptual hurdles students face when learning a new discipline.

In this paper we review the underlying logic of how accountants think. We aim to translate their way of thinking to academics and educators who may not be affiliate to the accounting discipline, say they have a different background such as economics or, despite not pertaining to accounting, they may be responsible for accounting courses and programmes at the level of the Business School. Our purpose is to foster possible cross boundaries dialogs that would support these academics understand accounting and what its teaching entails.

We rely on the aforementioned strand of literature to propose four Threshold Concepts. First, we introduce Linearity, Partition, and Conservation. Then, we show how they integrate to support the Income concept. Our approach is different from previous attempts that relied on Threshold Concepts in the context of accountancy. We make a point to advance a purely conceptual discussion. This paper characterises an intellectual inquiry into the formal underlying structures of accounting.

We locate the term ‘structure’, in part, by reference to Sangster (2010; 2018). Further, our contribution stems from extending the still limited scope of Threshold Concepts in the accounting context. Above all, we respond to a call by Lucas and Mladenovic (2007) for the ‘explicit introduction of complexity, in the form of organising structures’ when dealing with accounting education.

About the presenter

Frederico Botafogo obtained his PhD degree from University of Otago on work in accounting theory and linear algebra to frame accounting information. This provides additional means for completing valuations within an economic setting posited to be outside general equilibrium. Frederico has more than ten years’ working experience as a manager and consultant in his native Brazil. He has been living in New Zealand for the past seven years and currently teaches accounting at the Southern Institute of Technology in Invercargill.