Karen Bargate*

Department of Accounting, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

This paper emanates from a study which focused on Managerial Accounting and Financial Management (MAF) students’ experiences of learning in a Writing Intensive Tutorial (WIT) programme. Often students do not fully grasp the underlying disciplinary concepts and struggle to transfer knowledge from one context to another. The WIT programme was based on the principle of using informal exploratory writing – writing-to-learn – to support students’ learning and understanding of MAF concepts. The participants in the study were 15 MAF students who voluntarily participated in an 18-week WIT programme. Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) was used for the research design and as a data analysis tool. Following IQA protocols, nine affinities (themes) were generated to describe students’ experiences of learning in the WIT programme. This paper considers the students’ experiences of the affinity “understanding” of MAF concepts. The findings suggest that introducing writing-to-learn assignments impacts positively on students’ experiences of understanding MAF concepts. A writing programme legitimises writing in a MAF classroom and uses techniques which enhance understanding of concepts, and the concomitant benefits are improved communication skills without sacrificing course content.

Keywords: Accounting Students, Financial Management, Interactive Qualitative Analysis, Managerial Accounting, Writing Intensive Tutorial Programme, Writing-To Learn

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10291954.2015.999470