REFLEXIVITY IN LEARNING CRITICAL ACCOUNTING: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND ITS RESEARCH NEXUS

Abstract We explore our responses to our students’ use of self-reflective journals in an accounting theory subject. Being reflexive during our writing process gave us insights into our students’ learning, our teaching and the role these have in research. In restructuring our conversations and putting them into an accessible and publishable form, we created and exposed a number of paradoxes. In particular, the presentation of a cohesive narrative text, masked the ideologies and conflicts imbedded in the text we were synthesizing which was the antithesis of what we were trying to achieve in teaching critical accounting. Recognition of such paradoxes made us reflexive of our relationship to students and how this impinges on our roles as researchers. The negotiations and compromises of our power which students may have experienced in the student/teacher relationship can be echoed in the researcher/editor relationship. Whilst we acknowledge these relationships as confronting and oppressive we also argue that these processes can be emancipatory for the students, as well as for us. As teachers and researchers, reflexivity about our students’ engagement in their learning of critical accounting can inform the nexus between teaching and research. Ultimately, the purpose of learning and teaching critical accounting is to expose the conflicts, ideologies and complexities imbedded in accounting practice and not replicate them in the education process.