PERCEPTION OF THE INTRODUCTORY TEACHING OF ACCOUNTING TO NON-ACCOUNTANTS: THE PERSPECTIVE OF STUDENTS OF FEDERAL UNIVERSITIES OF THE STATE OF RIO GRANDE DO SUL

Abstract

The National Curricular Guidelines (NCG) of Administration and Economy courses mentioned that these courses shall include the subject of accounting in their syllabus. In this context, this research has as an object of study the subject Introductory Accounting (IA), and intends to evaluate it taking into consideration the perceptions of students who are not accountants. Furthermore, it intends to make an association between the researched courses and their methodolocigal aspects. For this, the methodological strategy of gathering information through a structured questionnaire or survey, with closed questions, applied in the first semester of 2008 to the students registered in the IA discipline, of the graduate courses of Administration and Economy, as well as in other courses that offer this discipline, at the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Sul is used. The sample, which represents 63,81% of the population employed the Qui-square test, Analysis of Multiple and Simple Correspondence (ANACOR and HOMALS), to verify the relation between categories and variables. The results indicated that the dissatisfaction with the learning and the lack of motivation among students may be associated to the approach taken by the teachers, since they coincide exactly with the student related to the disagree ment regarding the organization given to the content. Therefore, the learning purposes were not attained and there was no understanding in regard to the basis of accounting. Thus, these students answered that the content of the discipline is hard to understand. However, the students of Administration and Economy perceived the relevance of this content for their qualification, whereas the students of other courses completely disagreed, disagreed in this point or were totally indifferent to it.