vol. 15 núm. 28 (2017)

The development of the document aims to broach aspects of critical consideration of the teaching of accounting education in Colombia. The purpose is to reflect on the problem of accounting regulation and the impact of operational technical repetition in professionalization, versus, critical, reflective and research accounting thinking in the field of quality education.

Editorial

This document aims to address the issue of accounting education from the approach of skills and competencies in the process of training and professionalization in the framework of accounting knowledge. It proposes as perspective in the accounting discipline, strategic and global variables of research, critical and participative analysis with professional and competitive qualities, from missionary (and curricular) scenarios of formal and non-formal education institutions.

The author makes a compilation of main topics of discussion and reflection in the field of accounting education, taking as reference the journals specialized in the subject that originate in the Anglo-Saxon academic world, establishing a comparison between the themes and trends in the publication in Colombia and the United States and England. The author concludes that although the subjects in which accounting education is researched are not so different, it is clear that in the Anglo-Saxon world, the coordinated structure of work, the availability of methodological and theoretical tools and the circulation of knowledge, are different and configure a field of work very different from the one that develops in our context.

The author makes an analysis of the educational model developed by the National Apprenticeship Service —SENA— institution with a long tradition in the training of technicians and technologists in various areas of accounting practice. It emphasizes the relationship between the curricular design and the realities of the apprentices of the institution, and how they respond to problems that are not addressed or identified in professional training programs.

The document adress the differents aspects related with “competence” concept, which is the articulating axis around which the different training programs in higher education are structured, and particularly in Public Accounting. This reflection reflects the difficulty in understanding the term, and the inconsistency of their use in the design of different accounting curricula. This work concludes that is fundamental to broaden the debate about the concept, in an environment that is related with the capabilities and labour performances of the future accountants.

The document proposes a reflection about the dynamics of education in the field of accounting, emphasizing in the elementary problems of teaching (What, How and for what we teach) and how these questions are solved in the specific field of accounting, the author questions the traditional ways of transmitting knowledge, for its lack of updating and transdisciplinary sense.