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This study aims to provide a thick description of a four-day bridging course in introductory accounting presented before the start of a student’s first year. The course aims to address the lack of prior accounting knowledge. The study also evaluates the effectiveness of the course using econometric techniques. Treatment effects are considered when interpreting the results.

This voluntary intervention used a quasi-experimental research design and quantitative techniques, including the application of propensity score matching (PSM), to isolate the treatment effect on the treated and untreated groups.

A positive and significant association is reported between attending the bridging course and performance in the first assessment.

A bridging course in accounting offers higher educators an opportunity to ensure that students are academically better prepared when entering university. This course provides adequate prior knowledge from which a student will benefit during the first assessments, which may contribute to increased self-efficacy and retention. This intervention has social implications for students as they can interact, participate and easily transition from school to university. Social implications include learning communities that are formed at the onset of their studies.

Bridging courses have been presented in other disciplines with positive results but not yet in accounting. Bridging courses in accounting are viable interventions to address gaps in prior knowledge and assist with the transition from school to university. This study expands literature by demonstrating the application and interpretation of PSM in quasi-experimental designs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the life of the victim’s parents in Karnataka and to gain a better understanding of the consequences or impact of sex trafficking on them.

A narrative research design was used in the study. Applying the method of narrative inquiry and the concept of three common spaces, the study explored the actual life situations and experiences of the victim’s parents. The study covered three pairs of parents as participants from two cities, i.e. Mysore and Bangalore in the state of Karnataka. Data was collected through in-depth face-to-face interview, informal conversations, photographs and field notes.

The study found that the victims’ parents are living an isolated or socially alienated life with potential symptoms of behavioural, cognitive and emotional disorders. The study also found that the victim’s parents fundamental right to live with dignity and respect have been violated. A significant finding in the study was that the parents did not cite or refer to any substantial efforts undertaken by non-governmental organisations in reintegrating the victim’s families within their communities. There are many rehabilitative services available for the victims. Unfortunately, the victim’s parents mostly remain unnoticed and unattended by therapists, social work practitioners and policymakers. An appeal is made to therapists, social workers, policymakers and individuals to support the victim’s parents.

All forms of human trafficking, especially sex trafficking has drawn considerable interest from researchers, policymakers, charities and non-government agencies. However, very little is known about the living conditions of the victim’s parents, especially the psycho-social status in their families and neighbourhood. Therefore, it was pertinent to explore the life of the victim’s parents including violation of their human rights. It highlights the importance of support from the society in reintegrating the victim’s families with their communities. This paper contributes to the qualitative literature by providing narrative evidence, which will lead to better policymaking and designing effective support services for the victim’s parents.

THE POST‐WAR PERIOD has produced some major changes in methods of training of professional engineers, one of the most significant being the widespread adoption of various forms of sandwich course aimed at closer integration of academic study and practical experience. The ‘sandwich’ idea is not, however, a post‐war development; in fact, a number of college and university courses have been run on similar lines for many years. These were the prototypes of the thin‐sandwich arrangements involving alternating periods, usually of about six months, in college and in industry which characterise the courses leading to the recently instituted Diploma in Technology.

Many studies have illustrated the vast advantages which blended learning has to offer to the learning community. However, when a learner accesses a digital platform, one cannot ignore the negative repercussions which the learner would be subjected to in the process. Our study tries to analyze the negative repercussions of digital media distractions on their wholistic development.

Information pertaining to the use of digital media among students for blended learning and the consequent distractions faced by them in the process was elicited through a well-structured questionnaire from pre-university and university students. The PLS-SEM model was constructed to identify the effect of digital distractions on students' academic performance, outlook of life and health, keeping counseling and spiritual inclination as moderating variables.

From our research, we inferred that the students' time spent on a digital platform was directly related with their time spent on blended learning and their tendency to get distracted. However, they were more prone to e-distractions than e-learning. Furthermore, e-learning did not enhance their academic performance. However, distractions had significant negative repercussions on their mental health. Counseling that the students were getting in their educational institutions did not play any significant role in improving their mental health.

Studies which have been undertaken to analyze the negative repercussions of blended learning on the wholistic development of students are scarce. Given the increasing popularity of blended learning among South Asian students in recent times, our study has tried to bridge this gap.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of five factors, reflecting students' diversity in prior content and metacognitive knowledge, on students' academic performance in the introductory accounting course.

Based on a conceptual framework of prior knowledge, five factors are hypothesised to have an impact on students' performance. They are: prior accounting knowledge, age, gender, intended academic major, and first language. A self‐administered questionnaire is completed by students enrolled in the compulsory introductory accounting course at a large multi‐campus NZ university. Multivariate analysis is carried out to test the research hypotheses and the predictive ability of the five independent variables on students' performance.

Consistent with the educational psychology literature, prior content knowledge has a significant impact. Students' metacognitive knowledge, which differs according to their language and gender, also has a significant effect on students' performance.

The low R² in the regression model suggests that, although some of the study variables are significant, a high proportion of variation in academic performance remains unexplained by the model. The results may also not be representative of student population in general as information is elicited from students from one particular university. Future research could extend the sample to more than one tertiary institution and consider the effect of other potential variables such as students' intrinsic motivation and learning strategies.

Unlike many prior studies which lacked a theoretical framework to support their research, this study proposes a conceptual framework drawn from the education psychology literature for examining students' performance in the introductory accounting course.

Although the number of higher education institutes in Iran has been increased and the capacity of many universities has been expanded by the government and private sector, the tough competition among senior high school graduates is still a major concern. Authorities have been contemplating other ways to alleviate the discontent of applicants who seek access to free of charge public universities. The Cumulative Grade‐Point Average (CGPA) of senior high school level has recently been proposed by educational authorities as the most effective substitute for measuring students’ academic performances to enter universities. The purpose of this paper is explore the pros and cons of this proposal by interviewing ten purposively selected stakeholders.

In total, ten purposively selected stakeholders were interviewed.

Out of ten informants, six of them supported the modification of the University Entrance Exam (UEE), three supported its abolition, and one supported its continuation and repetition two or three times a year.

Since any innovation or reform in the exam will affect other components in the whole education system, the informants emphasized that it should be done incrementally. The findings of this study contribute to improving the knowledge of the UEE reform options.

Over the last few decades, there have been waves of assessment reforms around the world. This paper offers an update of the assessment reform in Iran, which adds information to current literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting the students’ learning of the concepts of the accounting information systems (AIS) in Iran.

The statistical population of the study is the accounting and auditing students (Master’s degree) who have the lesson of AIS at state and private universities, as well as the institutes of higher education in 2017. The Likert scale has been used to design questionnaires. Further, the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with the partial least squares technique.

Overall, after analyzing and comparing the results of the hypotheses, it was found that, respectively, “assistance to students,” “the power of critical thinking,” “academic professors skills,” “kind of transition to university,” “AIS course structure,” “proper timing of AIS presentation,“ “presentation of a prerequisite course” and finally, “appreciation of AIS” have the greatest impact on the level of student learning in AIS lesson. The results of this paper showed that “teaching style” and “having the previous background of the information system concepts” do not have a statistically significant effect on students’ general learning.

Without any overstatement, this paper will warn educational authorities in emerging countries that lack of attention to factors affecting university students’ learning can have serious consequences for the market of a country. Other than that, this paper will make university professors aware of the effects of effective methods for better student learning in the field of information technology, so that they can make a better assessment of the importance of AIS course.

This paper aims to take stock of existing publications devoted to entrepreneurship education and assess the alignment existing between its generic objectives, target audience, teaching methods and impact indicators.

A semi‐systematic literature review is applied; using six thematically separated excel data collection spreadsheets. Datasheets were used in order to reduce the author's bias. A total of 108 articles are reviewed in stages and by categorizing in terms of educational objectives, target audiences, community outreach activities, applied teaching methods and impact indicators.

Scholars in this field of study, though differing in a number of definitive issues, are converging towards a single framework of entrepreneurship education. There is a shift from a start‐up view to an attitude‐changing perspective of entrepreneurship education. However, with a diversity of target groups, there is still a non‐alignment between what educators and other stakeholders wish to achieve in educating for entrepreneurship with the applied pedagogical approaches, and success indicators.

The work has some limitations involved with literature reviews. The main noticeable limitation is the inclusion of both empirical and theoretical literature; it would be more appropriate to use a meta‐analysis approach.

Entrepreneurship education is reviewed in its totality. This is beneficial to educators and policy‐makers that are involved in setting or facilitating entrepreneurship educational programmes. The work will, specifically, help to understand problems related to non‐alignment in setting entrepreneurship educational programmes; a common pitfall for most of education designers.

The novelty of the work is in the use of data collection sheets. This has minimized the author's own bias, and brought some logical quantification into drawing meanings and conclusions from the existing literature in entrepreneurship education.