Accounting Education in the Pacific Region: Challenges, Innovations, and Future Directions

Call for Papers – Accounting Education in the Pacific Region: Challenges, Innovations, and Future Directions

Journal: Pacific Accounting Review
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Special issue closes: 14 September 2026

This special issue focuses on accounting education across the Pacific region, examining how programmes respond to diverse learner needs, Indigenous perspectives, professional‑body expectations, accreditation pressures, and technological change. It invites research, practice‑based, and reflective contributions that illuminate both challenges and innovative strategies in accounting education within Pacific‑region institutions.

Why this issue matters

• Accounting education in the Pacific region operates in a culturally, economically, and institutionally diverse environment, from large metropolitan universities to smaller, often resource‑constrained, Pacific‑island institutions.

• The region faces twin pressures: global professional‑body standards (e.g., CPA, CA, ACCA) and local demands for culturally relevant, inclusive curricula.

• This SI aims to build a regional knowledge base on how accounting education is adapting, and to identify transferable innovations across the Pacific.

Core themes and research areas

Contributions may address, but are not limited to:

• Engaging diverse and evolving student cohorts

  • Strategies for supporting non‑traditional, first‑in‑family, Indigenous, and multicultural students in accounting programmes.

  • Pedagogical innovations for improving retention, completion, and success in diverse classroom settings.

• Integrating Indigenous perspectives

  • Culturally responsive pedagogies that embed Pacific and Indigenous knowledge systems into accounting curricula.

  • How to reconcile Western accounting frameworks with community‑based economies, land‑ownership systems, and relational accountability.

• Meeting professional expectations

  • Aligning course outcomes and assessments with professional‑body competencies and evolving practice (e.g., digital skills, data literacy, ESG reporting).

  • Curriculum design that balances technical competence, ethics, and professional behaviour.

• Navigating accreditation challenges

  • How accreditation requirements (national and international) affect curriculum design, staffing, and resource allocation.

  • Strategies for responding to future‑oriented accreditation agendas (e.g., sustainability, technology, ethics).

• Fostering academic careers in the Pacific

  • How to recruit, develop, and retain accounting academics in a region with smaller faculties and limited research infrastructure.

  • Models for collaborative research, mentoring, and capacity‑building networks across Pacific‑region universities.

• Adopting emerging technologies

  • Use of learning‑management systems, analytics, AI‑assisted feedback, and simulation tools in accounting education.

  • How digital tools reshape assessment, plagiarism detection, and student engagement without widening equity gaps.

• Strengthening industry engagement and employability

  • Work‑integrated learning, industry‑led cases, guest lecturing, and curriculum co‑design to boost employability.

  • Partnerships between academia, accounting firms, public‑sector agencies, and Indigenous‑owned enterprises.

Submissions can include empirical studies, theoretical pieces, case studies, reflective practice reports, or exploratory work so long as they offer meaningful insights specific to accounting education in the Pacific region.

Guest editors

• Dr Nicola Beatson, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  Email: nicola.beatson@canterbury.ac.nz

• Dr James Wakefield, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
  Email: james.wakefield@uts.edu.au

Submission details

• Submission platform: ScholarOne Manuscripts for Pacific Accounting Review:
  https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/parev

• Submissions open: 16 March 2026

• Submissions close: 14 September 2026

• When submitting, select the special issue title “Accounting Education in the Pacific Region: Challenges, Innovations, and Future Directions” under “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

• Manuscripts must be original and not under review elsewhere, and authors must follow the journal’s Author Guidelines:
  https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/parev

This special issue is ideal for accounting educators, curriculum designers, professional‑association representatives, and researchers interested in the Pacific region’s distinctive educational and socio‑cultural context.

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