An undeniable passion for creating a robust and imaginative teaching and learning environment has seen one WSU lecturer’s ideas and interventions earning him a prestigious international teaching award recently.
Senior lecturer at the Buffalo City Campus’ accounting and finance department, Trust Chikera, has been a picture of elation since his awarding of this year’s Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Excellence Award under the “Teaching Excellence Award” category.
The annual CIMA Excellence Awards recognise educational institutions and individuals across the world going above-and-beyond to shape the next generation of Chartered Global Management Accountants and lead the accounting profession into the future.
“This award has greatly encouraged me to continue working hard in improving the learning experiences of my students. Management Accounting is not a favourite subject for most accounting students as most consider it complicated. That means management accounting lecturers must first work on changing these negative perceptions held by students and then breaking down the complex subject principles in a manner that captures and engages the students.,” said Chikera.
In mitigating the aforementioned challenges, the lecturer has devised numerous strategies, ideas and interventions to ensure that students in his management accounting lesson enjoy the course and fully grasp the academic concepts therein.
Since arriving at the university in July last year, Chikera has sought to incorporate dynamism and imagination into his lessons – paying careful consideration to the context and lived experiences of his students and then tailoring his teaching methods accordingly.
“I always aim to equip students with lifelong skills such as critical thinking, digital/analytical mindset, research, and ethics. As such, my students often appreciate the value-add from my classes. When students are happy, they achieve more and speak more about the lecturer and eventually someone will take notice of the work you are doing and your commitment to it. In addition, I am obsessed with improving myself, I reflect on my every class to identify areas of improvement and areas that engaged students the most,” he said.
Yet another key intervention close to Chikera’s heart has been to drive a change in students’ mindsets – a venture quite important as such a paradigm shift can significantly influence how individuals navigate through the many judgements and decisions they make throughout the course of their careers.
He said a well-developed analytical and digital mindset for accountants will therefore enable them to be the inquisitive and creative, gives them an ability to ask novel questions, engage in data exploration and data visualisation, an ability to unearth unpredictable data patterns and make data-driven judgements and predictions.
“So, I always expose my students to activities that not only require them to recite theory from memory but to ask the right questions, extract relevant data, analyse the data, and interpret the results and use these results to support their arguments,” he concluded.
Chikera is currently in his final stages of completing his PhD in Accounting Studies wherein he’s investigating investigates the liquidity decisions of South African listed corporates and to what extend these decisions are driven by the macroeconomic environment obtaining in the country.
By Thando Cezula