8. Fluency Training
as a Pedagogical Tool to Improve Performance of Undergraduate Students Enrolled
in the First Financial Accounting Course
Presenter: William E. Huffman, Missouri Southern State College
Description: This session
contributes to the debate on accounting pedagogy in basic financial accounting
by examining fluency training as a way to improve student performance. Fluency
training has been shown to improve performance of students in other academic
disciplines. Long-term payoffs include greater retention, increased student
effort and perseverance, and improved critical-thinking, communication, and
interpersonal skills. Prior studies have shown fluent students to use more
creative problem-solving skills and solve diverse and unstructured problems in
unfamiliar settings. If this is achieved with accounting students, then the
students will be better equipped to develop analytical, conceptual-thinking,
and communication skills.
Students are often not fluent in the
component skills. This makes learning more complex tasks extremely difficult.
Fluency training has proven to be a successful method for increasing students'
capability for learning. Research has shown that the higher the prerequisite
skill rates of fluency, the faster a complex skill will be learned. Students
who obtain fluency are quicker to grasp more complex subjects. Accounting
educators should consider fluency training as a viable method for improving the
learning of accounting students.
