The impact of cultural factors on students' learning style preferences on implementation of the International Education Standards (IES)

Recently the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has issued the International Education Standards (IES) in order to implement successful convergence of accounting education. Despite such a growing global demand for the convergence of accounting education, there however exists anecdotal evidence that existing cultural diversities may prevent an effective implementation of these Standards. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to empirically examine the role that cultural factors have on students’ learning style preferences. An effective total of 130 undergraduate accounting students were used in our sample. These students came from five Japanese universities and two Australian universities. Employing our questionnaire, students were asked Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory and Hofstedes’ Value Survey Model for Young People in order to collect data for analyses variables. Then several statistical techniques were applied to explore latent relationships between learning styles for accounting students and their cultural factors. The findings of our study indicated that cultural differences across the two nations studied had a significant impact on accounting students’ learning style preferences. It was also found from the analyses that differences in students’ learning styles are significantly associated with their degree of individualism (IVD) and uncertainty avoidance (UAI). The study recommends that accounting instructors should be very sensitive to cultural differences and adjust their teaching methods in order to achieve the best mix of acceptable learning outcomes. Similarly, the IFAC should be encouraged to produce specific guidelines that take into account cultural differences in the process of international convergence of accounting education.