Fostering social skills in the Flemish secondary accounting education: perceived challenges, opportunities, and future directions

The accounting profession no longer merely accentuates hard accounting skills, but also increasingly soft social skills. Previous studies have shown that teamwork, communication, leadership, and critical thinking skills became indispensable. Because accounting education is no longer aligned with these needs of the profession, a skills gap has arisen between the competences graduates possess, and the competences employers demand. We will answer the call of scholars and policymakers to investigate social skills from early on, in secondary education. The research objective is twofold. First, it examines which types of social skills are being addressed in secondary accounting education. Second, it focuses on the challenges and opportunities experienced by accounting educators when addressing social skills. We answer this research objective via semi-structured interviews with 14 Flemish educational stakeholders who represented three educational levels (i.e. microlevel accounting teachers, mesolevel pedagogical counsellors, and macrolevel policymakers), hereby accommodating a multivocal perspective. Results revealed that teamwork and communication are emphasized more frequently than leadership and critical thinking. Second, teachers identified various challenges and opportunities, such as overcrowded curricula, student diversity, and complex social skills assessment. Important implications for accounting educators wanting to enhance students’ future employability by stimulating their social skills are discussed.