Teaching tax through the Socratic method.

• Author: Efrat, Rafi
• Position: Campus to Clients

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The study of taxation is an intellectual challenge, given the complexity of the tax law and business and investments today. In college, many accounting students take only one tax course, which is usually delivered through lectures. Students who enter the tax field will have additional tax instruction throughout their careers, much of it also delivered by lectures in continuing education courses.

Unfortunately, research shows that students retain little of what is taught in lecture format. This column explores a type of active learning pedagogy that university and continuing education instructors should consider using in order to help students attain more permanent and meaningful learning. Active learning approaches can also improve critical thinking skills, which are crucial to success in the tax field.

Lecturing and Its Drawbacks

Research has consistently shown that the use of lecture dominates classroom education. Studies have reported that between 73% and 83% of surveyed college faculty identified the lecture method as their usual instructional strategy. These high percentages were common for large and small schools, both public and private, as well as community colleges (Gardiner, Redesigning Higher Education: Producing Dramatic Gains in Student Learning (George Washington University 1994)).

Lecturing is the most common teaching method used by tax educators. In a 2003 survey on the state of the tax curriculum, an AICPA-ATA (American Taxation Association) joint task force found that the lecture method was the most prevalent method used for teaching tax (Kern and Dennis-Escoffier, "Current Status of the Tax Curriculum in Accounting Programs," 35 The Tax Adviser 712 (November 2004)). When lectures are used in the classroom, the teacher does most of the talking as well as most of the thinking, while the students passively listen and memorize the materials (Vallino, "Design Patterns--Evolving from Passive to Active Learning," 3 Frontiers in Educ. 19 (November 2003)).

While lectures transmit knowledge, research in cognitive psychology suggests that they may not be the most effective way to promote learning. Passive learners do not learn well (Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Education Manifesto (Macmillan 1982)). Instead, effective learning takes place when people actively participate in their own learning (Chickering and Gamson, "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," 39 AAHE Bulletin 3 (1987)).

Active Learning

A number of educational organizations, including the American Association of Higher Education, identified the use of active learning as one of the seven principles of good practice in teaching (Chickering and Gamson, "Seven Principles for Good Practice"). A similar push for active learning has occurred in the field of accounting education. The Accounting Education Change Commission's Position Statements recommend that accounting teachers should use more active learning methods in class (Accounting Education Commission, "Objectives of Education of Accountants: Position Statement Number One," http://aaahq.org/AECC/pdf/position/pos1.pdf)

Active learning requires students to do more than just listen. Instead, they must read, write, discuss, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. In other words, active learning proposes learning strategies that gets students to do things and think about what they are doing (Limbach and Waugh, "Questioning the Lecture Format," Thought & Action 21 (2005)).

Studies that assess students' performance have shown that the use of active learning methods effectively promotes the development of...