A phenomenographic look at accounting students’ learning during the Covid-19 pandemic

The objective was to understand how the learning of Brazilian accounting students at different stages of their training was experienced throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. A phenomenographic study was conducted with thirteen undergraduate students in Accounting, from public and private universities that adopted emergency remote teaching. Among the results, an explanatory structure was created based on descriptive categories that emerged from the data. The results contribute to the understanding of the learning context experienced, mainly the study environment experienced by the students investigated: online remote teaching accessed from home, marked by an abrupt transition, the unpreparedness of professors and students, distractions, emotional impacts, lack of infrastructure by students, and harm to learning in a country where graduation represents a possibility of social advancement. They also explain how this reconfigured the learning context, which problems in the face-to-face educational process persisted in online remote teaching, and how this learning context translated into negative consequences for the learning of students who experienced online remote teaching throughout the pandemic. At the end, reflections and a research agenda are recommended to address the described problems.