This paper presents an in-depth look at the learning process in financial accounting. A small group of students is monitored at regular intervals throughout an introductory accounting course. A variety of process tracing techniques, such as concurrent verbal protocols, sorting of journal entries, and free association are employed in order to identify changes in the content and organization of the students accounting knowledge, as well as in their problem solving strategies.
Students start out with the heuristic reasoning strategy.
As the course progresses and they begin to develop their accounting templates, students switch to the template-driven recognition strategy. Unfortunately, this change is not permanent. The accounting knowledge begins to fade even before the term is over, and student performance begins to revert to the level at the beginning of the course. An explanation proposed in this paper is that student learning appears to be based on memorization without understanding. The students fail to develop a frame of reference that allows them to make sense out of the accounting information.