Educating accounting professionals: Development of a theoretical framework as a language of description of accounting knowledge production and its implications for accounting academics at South African universities

Many accounting academics in South Africa encounter tension between the core academic requirements of research and teaching. A range of factors identified by this study contributes to the existence of this tension. These include the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants’ (SAICA) firm role in controlling the curriculum of the professionally-orientated programmes, the requirement by universities that all academics should produce research, the need by the profession for quality students with good technical skills, and the emphasis on transformation of higher education in the developing economy of South Africa.The theoretical framework developed in this study, which is based on Bernstein’s (1996) pedagogic device, identifies the different constructions of knowledge in the Accounting discipline. Additionally, it provides a language of description for the conversion of new and existing knowledge into pedagogic discourse. Boyer’s (1990) four domains of scholarship link closely with Bernstein’s pedagogic device, and illuminate the permeable boundaries between the different fields, confronting the weary ‘teaching versus research’ debate, and defining what it means to be a scholar.The study identifies the different dimensions of scholarship in which Accounting academics are involved, which is considered both valid and highly valued by members of the Accounting profession. It is recommended that universities, who wish to retain their status of producing students who meet the quality demands of a profession, need to develop scholarship and teaching expertise and to reward excellence in academic teaching on professional programmes