Accounting education scholarship and institutional interventions have historically emphasised remediation, access and retention, with comparatively limited attention given to structured pedagogical initiatives for high-performing students. The ‘Chartered Accountancy Excellence Programme’ (‘CA-E Programme’) was established to respond to this gap. The programme was piloted at a large South African university for students in their final year of study towards qualifying as a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) CA(SA). The programme was designed drawing on the concepts of emancipatory accounting education, integrated thinking and multi-capital value creation. A qualitative case study is used to critically evaluate the programme drawing on multiple qualitative data sources including (i) facilitator reflective journals and field notes documenting programme intentions, implementation dynamics and tensions; (ii) programme materials (session plans and activity designs) evidencing the enacted pedagogical design; (iii) anonymised post-programme student feedback collected by way of open-ended questions, capturing participant-perceived value, limitations and suggested improvements; and (iv) one-on-one interviews and intra-facilitator discussions. The findings suggest that, on the one hand, an advanced pedagogical design generates multi-capital value by way of deliberate cognitive stretch, interdisciplinary integration and a focus on problem-solving. On the other hand, the programme also reveals persistent tensions around exclusivity, curriculum boundaries and time constraints.
Ecim et al. (Wed,) studied this question.