Abstract The effect of instructional strategy on tax expertise was investigated in an experimental setting. Fifty-eight introductory tax students received instruction in a specific tax Issue ("similar or related in service or use" under I.RC. Section 1033) using three instructional strategies (cases, examples, and concepts). Rule application and factor identification were used as measures of performance. Two different variations of the "similar or related" issue were investigated: the first variation involved an atypical context and the second involved an increase in ambiguity. Subjects in the examples treatment outperformed those in the cases and concepts treatment in terms of rule application. Overall, subjects in the cases and concepts treatments out-performed those In the examples treatment in terms of factor Identification. Variation of scenarios between typical and atypical did not, in general, affect factor identification. In an ambiguous situation subjects in the concepts treatment outperformed subjects In the cases and examples treatments. Although not attaining the level of performance of subjects In the concepts: treatment, subjects' performance on factor Identification for the cases treatment was found to improve when - problems were based on atypical rather than typical contexts. These results imply that instructional strategy and variation in context during learning influence the transfer of tax knowledge.
Anderson et al. (Wed,) studied this question.