Past, Present and Future of the Iasb

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EDITORIAL Stefan Schiller The world and thus the economic environment is transforming at an ever faster rate, owing to a large extent to the forces of the market and Mother Nature. Friedman (2011) writes in a thought-provoking article that the world is caught in a dangerous feedback loop. The vicious circle of higher oil prices and climate disruption leads to higher food prices, higher food prices lead to more instability, and more instability leads to higher oil prices, and so on. Accounting rule-making has to accommodate this dynamically changing economic environment. The title of this textbook, Past, Present and Future of the IASB – From a Student Perspective, describes accounting rule-making in a dynamically changing economic environment. This editorial will dwell on some of the observations made about student-centered learning and the regulatory approach to the formulation of accounting theory as discussed by Riahi-Belkaoui (2004). In general terms, student-centered learning (SCL) is an approach to teaching that focuses on the needs of students rather than those of lecturers and educational administrators. The concept was originally coined as early as 1905 by Hayward and reemphasized in 1956 in Dewey’s work (O’Sullivan, 2004). According to O’Neill and McMahon (2005, p. 27) the traditional form of teaching, that is, lecturer-centered learning (LCL), has begun to be increasingly criticized for making the student passive, and this has paved the way for SCL as an alternative approach. Rogers (1983, p. 188) describes the generic prerequisite for SCL as the need for: “… a leader or person who is perceived as an authority figure in the situation, is sufficiently secure within herself (himself) and in her (his) relationship to others that she (he) experiences an essential trust in the capacity of others to think for themselves, to learn for themselves.” After a
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