ANALYSIS OF SKILLS DEVELOPED AND DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED IN TEACHING ACCOUNTING

APPLICATION OF PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING

Abstract

This research purpose to analyze the skills developed and difficulties encountered in the application of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) from the perspective of students of the discipline of the Accounting Sciences course at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). To this end, a case study was carried out, whose unit of analysis was composed of 59 students enrolled in the Corporate Controllership discipline. A questionnaire, composed of open questions, was used as a data collection instrument. Soon after application, the answers were transcribed to a digital file and submitted to open coding in the ATLAS.ti® software, in order to perform the content analysis. In summary, the results showed that the skills developed by students through the PBL method were: critical thinking, teamwork, ability to understand and solve problems, autonomous learning, recognize different points of view, planning, leadership, interdisciplinarity. On the other hand, the difficulties were related to: physical structure, aversion to the method, autonomous study, lack of tutor guidance, lack of clarity of the PBL stages, application time, level of disruption of the problem and lack of collaboration of the members. In general, it was found that most of the difficulties encountered are related to aversion to the method, however, with the help of tutors, part of the difficulties was remedied.