Learning Effects, Achievement Goals and Time Constraints in Accounting Education: Findings from Experiments

Abstract

Accounting education has been a topic of great concern to scholars, and teachers of accounting want to enhance students’ learning performance. Thus, in this study, we conducted laboratory experiments to investigate how mastery/performance achievement goal orientations influence the accounting performance of students. Ninety undergraduates from Tainan Technology University participated in this study. The experiment examined how the type of student achievement goal and the test time influenced accounting performance. A two-way between-participants factorial design of achievement goal (mastery vs. performance) × test time (30 vs. 40 vs. 50 min) was adopted. The results of students’ score changes from pre-test to post-test revealed that those students with a mastery achievement goal had a better learning effect than those with a performance achievement goal. The main effect of test time also showed a significant difference. The score change in the low-difficulty condition (longest time) was significantly higher than that in the moderate-difficulty condition (intermediate amount of time), and the score change in the moderate-difficulty condition was significantly higher than that in the high-difficulty condition (shortest time). Lastly, the two-way interaction of achievement goal type and test time was significant. The effect of test difficulty on score change was contingent on the type of achievement goal.