The exceptional academic achievement of Prof Steven Coetzee and Ms Astrid Schmulian of the Department of Accounting was recognised when they were announced as team winners of the Teaching Excellence and Innovation Laureate Award at the Annual UP Academic Achievers' Awards function, held on 5 April 2016.

 

Inspired by an International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) teachers' workshop in London and research by Stanford's Prof Mary Barth, Prof Coetzee and Ms Schmulian introduced framework-based teaching.

 

The team believes students learn actively through observing the lecturers interacting and through their own interaction with the lecturers, with each other and with the material, to think more critically, read more attentively, communicate more precisely – all while growing as independent thinkers and life-long learners.

 

Research informs Prof Coetzee and Ms Schmulian's teaching and they received funding from the International Association of Accounting Education and Research (IAAER) to support their research. They were the first South African-based authors to publish in Issues in Accounting Education, an A-rated journal in terms of the ABDC ranking list, and have published in other leading international journals on accounting education. They have also co-presented, with leading international academics, accounting education in the Department's course work master's degree.  

 

Today, this team of two are jointly ranked eighth on the Brigham Young Individual accounting education ranking for 2015, making a significant contribution to UP's 3rd institutional position in terms of this ranking.