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The paper aims to introduce this special issue on LEAD, the research management system under which the papers collected in this issue were produced. The paper explains the background that led to the establishment of the system, presents a short history of LEAD, describes how it is managed, and details the various stages of a typical LEAD “cycle”. It concludes with a brief description of the papers to follow.

Reflective description.

LEAD is a successful collaborative system for organising “action research” in learning and teaching within a business faculty. The papers in this issue serve to demonstrate the system's outcomes.

The paper is essentially descriptive. The described system illustrates one way of organising collaborative research in a university faculty, in this instance focused on research into learning and teaching in a business faculty.

LEAD provides a model for managing collaborative university research, one that could be applied in any university faculty and across different research areas. Apart from illustrating the potential of the system, each of the papers collected in this issue is of interest in its own right, as a study of learning and teaching in a particular disciplinary context.

The LEAD system is a novel way of organising learning and teaching research in a university context.

The purpose of this paper is to review research and strategies in Australian business education that aim to foster graduate capabilities in sustainability concepts and practices, also to present a case study of teaching practice along with ideas for future development.

The authors report on a research project by seven Australian universities, with financial support from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), on how to develop and grade graduate capabilities with sustainability identified as a core graduate skill. An example is presented from the Faculty of Business and Economics of a strategy in action – the use of a case study (centred on sustainability practices at the university) to enhance the skills of merit scholars.

Corporate social responsibility is a well‐established concept in business management theory, with sustainability principles emerging as a core feature. In the higher education sector, the spirit may be willing, but training in the application of these principles has been implemented as an add‐on rather than an embedded part of the curriculum. Although efforts are being made to find ways of nurturing graduate capabilities in sustainability practice, a significant obstacle is the lack of teaching models and materials. The authors offer findings from the ALTC graduate skills project as well as a case study of implementation.

The authors report on practical innovations in fostering business graduate skills in implementing sustainability principles, assess the utility of current education practice and present some suggestions for future learning and teaching strategies.

The demand for Accounting Information Systems (AIS) knowledge has increased exponentially over the past two decades, but studying AIS has not proved easy for many accounting students. The aim of the study is to understand the challenges accounting students face in studying AIS through investigation of the factors which may be contributing to their difficulties.

A survey instrument was developed for this study, and data were gathered from 618 students enrolled in AIS courses, 95 per cent of whom were accounting students. The data were analysed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique.

The results show that course structure, pre‐existing knowledge of Information Systems (IS), assessment of critical thinking, teaching style and the availability of academic assistance to students all have a significant influence on students' learning experience in AIS courses.

The study has important implications for AIS educators through its identification and analysis of possible difficulties faced by students. It is hoped that remedial measures to enhance this experience will be explored and implemented.

The study was conducted in one university context, so caution should be exercised in generalising the results. Future research could further validate, question, or extend the findings in multiple tertiary education institutions, in various countries.

This is one of the first studies to introduce scales to measure students' perceptions and experiences in AIS courses. It is hoped that this paper will initiate a discussion that leads to a better understanding of students' perceptions of challenges, and thus make AIS learning a richer and more enjoyable experience for students.

While the natural expectation is that students seek greater depth of learning as they develop intellectually during their studies, some research calls this into question and even suggests that student learning can become shallower from year to year. The present study aims to investigate the relative depth of students' learning at different stages of their undergraduate studies by comparing second‐year with third‐year students in two statistics units.

A survey was conducted using Biggs's Study Process Questionnaire. The survey results were used to compare second‐ and third‐year groups, as well as to investigate other variables by comparing the performances of: international and domestic students, male and female students, students who worked and those who did not work, and students who intended to register for a higher degree and those who did not.

Significant differences in approaches were found between male and female students; and between students who intended to enrol in a higher degree and those who did not.

Characteristics of the learning and teaching environment, including quality of teaching, were not investigated in this study. These and the possibility of students' mixed approaches to learning depending on the unit of study might have significant impact on the results. Additionally, this study is specific to one Sydney university; therefore the results might not be generalisable.

The findings from this study provide evidence that there is no significant difference between second and third year; or in international and local students' approaches to learning in statistics.

With large numbers of overseas students enrolled in university accounting courses in Australia, there is a growing trend in the postgraduate accounting courses to approach the problem of language and communication difficulties by offering discipline‐specific language training through an embedded curriculum approach in collaboration with English language specialists. This raises a general question about the nature of evidence required to demonstrate that students' professional language skills have been enhanced by these interdisciplinary programs. The paper aims to address the basic question: what evidence is available about the effectiveness of programs that align English language with disciplinary teaching?

The purpose of the paper is to review existing research to discover the nature of evidence that is available to address the effectiveness of programs that align English language with disciplinary teaching.

In the area of accounting research, it is very difficult to unbundle the effects of improvement in communication skills from improved understanding of discipline content.

At a subject level, language interventions could pay more attention to the attributes of “good” evidence, while at a program level a suite of data sources may support a persuasive argument for improvement in students' communication skills.

If associations between integration and language improvement can be established through quantitative and qualitative research methods and reliable evidence for this can be presented to educational policy makers, then interdisciplinary approaches may be seen as valid alternatives to the more readily available (and cheaper) “bolt‐on programs” at university‐wide levels, where language support is given separately from discipline content.

The research addressed the question of whether there is evidence of the effectiveness of initiatives that align English language with disciplinary teaching in accounting. The answer is “yes”. It was gathered from a variety of research methods including experimentation, use of available data, diagnostic tests and self reporting by students and staff. What is apparent from the collected evidence is the effectiveness of interdisciplinary approaches that integrate language support and accounting content.

The purpose of this paper's novel, research‐oriented approach is to embed research‐based activities in a core second‐year course of a university business degree program to support and develop student research capabilities.

The design draws on Boud and Prosser's work to foster participation in a learner‐centred, discipline‐based approach. Activities rely on technology supports and mixed delivery modes to combine diverse theoretical perspectives and research methodologies.

The initial implementations of the design generated improved student learning experiences compared to the previous year. Voluntary participation was high and informal evidence suggested that research activities were a core‐contributing element to positive student outcomes.

A formal evaluation study is required to measure precisely the extent to which research activities like those described in this paper have an effect on students' learning experiences.

The research activities embedded in the course curriculum enriched learner participation and experiences without overtaxing resources and, with minor modification, are transferable to different courses and disciplines.

The technology‐supported environment described in this study allowed for online viewing of submitted research activities and provided students the opportunity to continually review, reflect and share their insights.

Learner‐focused research activities offer students a novel opportunity to experience research firsthand as informants, inventors and interpreters of knowledge. The adoption of research activities within the curriculum structure is a creative and multifaceted effort to extend students' research understanding.

Feedback is a central element of the learning experience yet, until recently, few studies have focused directly on what students think about feedback. This paper seeks to address this issue.

Data collected as part of a larger study investigating reasons for consistently low ratings of feedback across the higher education sector are reported. The larger study includes Rowe and Wood's Student Feedback Questionnaire (SFQ), which gathers quantitative data on student perceptions and preferences for feedback, but also includes two open‐ended questions inviting students to give written comments on why they believe feedback is important, and how the feedback they are getting could be improved.

Focusing on responses to the first open‐ended question and viewing comments in the context of the larger study and its findings, an analysis is offered of the students' responses, extracting seven different student conceptions of the function of feedback.

Feedback serves a wide variety of functions in the lives of students, not limited to the implication of feedback for learning. Students are most likely to succeed in an environment where their broader social needs are met.

The findings reported in this paper contribute to an area of educational research previously neglected, drawing attention to: the importance which students attach to feedback as a teacher's personal response to them as individuals; and the need to take into account students' perceptions – both positive and negative – of the emotional aspects of feedback.

As educational technologies are more widely adopted in higher education teaching and learning, publishers often include online resources to accompany their textbook offerings. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a study forming part of a larger ongoing evaluation of the third party software product WileyPLUS.

The paper describes the integration of the publisher's tools into a specific curriculum context and takes a critical look at the pedagogical effectiveness of the software in this context. A mixed‐methods approach is taken in the study, using a small postgraduate accounting unit as a case study.

While many students reported positive experiences with the third party resources, technical issues were a barrier to their effectiveness and many students did not engage with the optional resources. The unit convenor's experience was largely positive.

Although it may be tempting for unit convenors to adopt these tools and resources as readily available and easy to use, it is important that they are integrated into the curriculum and that students are supported in their use.

Outcomes include a list of critical success factors and an evaluation framework that could be of use to other academics seeking to embed third party resources into their teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to examine individuals' levels of work ethic amongst current and recent university attendees across three countries. This article presents the results of a survey of 537 respondents from the United States of America, Korea and China, thus extending the previous research into work ethic, often conducted from a Western perspective. The comparative study aims to enhance the understanding of cross-cultural and gender differences and similarities whilst probing for the levels of work ethic amongst the respondents.

A comparative research method was adopted because the authors' aim was to probe similarities and differences across three societies. Multiple analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests were utilised to explore gender and country-related differences. Cluster analysis was applied to probe for segments highly similar to each other in the levels of work ethic of the respondents.

The results confirm the hypothesised differences between countries as well as across gender groups, with American females having the highest levels of work ethic, closely followed by Chinese males and females. Three distinct segments – low, medium and high levels of work ethic – were found in all three countries, indicating that there are individuals in each of the societies who could benefit from strategies for increasing the individuals' levels of work ethic.

Novel gender comparisons of the three country groups revealed American females as having the highest levels of work ethic and Korean females the lowest, whilst the identification of clusters of low, medium and high levels of work ethic provides evidence of the need to increase levels of work ethic to enhance productivity, regardless of the country of origin.