I’m delighted that on this website you can access the Researching Accountant Development Framework (RADF), a resource developed from research I carried out with professional accountants who had made the move into academia to help anyone making that transition to develop their research capability. There is also a short webinar you can register for to help you get the most out of the resource.
After I got my MBA from the Open University I went on to become a part-time Associate Lecturer within its Business School. I had always prided myself that as a chartered accountant I would abide by our ethical code and only undertake work I was capable to perform. As a student, anticipating the move into teaching, I consciously saw as many lecturers as possible in action, to see what good looked like. So that was a good start yet here I was being let loose on classes of unsuspecting students. Without any teaching qualification. I felt very uncomfortable about that and immersed myself in every opportunity to develop my teaching skills. I joined course teams, moderated forums, monitored other lecturers’ marking, mentored lecturers even newer than I was and before too long I was accepted as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I now felt my students were in much safer hands and indeed I have since been presented with an OU Teaching Award.
Then I got involved in research and embarked on another very steep learning curve. IFAC, the global overarching accountancy body, had introduced a requirement that all professional bodies for accountants introduce compulsory continuing professional development (CPD) schemes and a requirement that they foster a commitment to lifelong learning. My interest was piqued. What exactly was CPD? What was lifelong learning? How did the two interact? And how best could they help professional accountants have a successful career in the uncertain times in which we all now live.
Several years and a Doctorate in Education later, I had some answers in the shape of a learning framework that could help accountants explore the learning they needed. I wrote a book - Adaptability: the secret to lifelong learning – and had a couple of articles accepted in peer-reviewed journals. And something strange happened. Academic colleagues at the OU began to treat me differently, with more respect, as an equal. I felt I was now a fully-fledged member of the academic “club”.
Further research led to a second learning framework which is now being used across the professional doctorate programmes at the OU. It helps doctoral researchers not only develop the knowledge and skills needed to become a researcher but also encourages them to think about the impact their research is having on them and how through their research they can make a difference.
Then I had a bright idea. Could I carry out more research and develop another framework that would help professional accountants moving into academia develop their research capabilities? To help them go from being a fledgling researcher, or maybe even from being an unhatched egg, to becoming fully fledged. To help them achieve their research wings.
As professional accountants we arrive in academia with a professional qualification, with lots of experience and with lots of transferable skills. But from the academic perspective we are novices. We need to learn a new body of knowledge and work out how to put our transferable skills to good use so that we have a successful new career. The RADF is here to help you do that.
Finally, please do let me know about your experiences using it. Any resource is only as good as the outcomes it produces and I would love to hear from you after you have been able to interact with the RADF.
Dr Hilary Lindsay
Useful links
