For many years, accounting education research has highlighted the need for students to develop stronger critical thinking skills. This need has become even more imperative as the accounting profession continues to transition, and entry-level accountants are expected to demonstrate stronger critical thinking skills earlier in their careers. In this paper, we revisit the higher education literature to identify key recommendations for accounting education to simultaneously develop desired critical thinking skills and accounting technical knowledge. Based on existing research in higher education, we recommend that accounting educators apply a model of cognitive development—the reflective judgment model—to better understand students’ thinking and to design and employ more effective learning activities. To encourage adoption of this approach, we summarize existing accounting education recommendations for improved critical thinking education. Although we believe that these recommendations are beneficial, we recognize that only limited accounting education research supports the ideas presented here. Accordingly, we propose calls to action for additional research in this area. Our students need for us to identify and adopt educational practices to generate graduates who have the critical thinking skills required by our rapidly-changing profession. To meet this need, researchers should actively engage in activities to fill the gap in empirical data about the development of students’ critical thinking skills throughout the accounting curriculum. Also, accounting departments and faculty need to support both educational research and improved learning design.

多年来，会计教育研究强调学生需要发展更强的批判性思维能力。随着会计行业的持续转型，这一需求变得更加迫切，并且入门级会计师有望在其职业生涯的早期展现出更强的批判性思维能力。在本文中，我们将重新审视高等教育文献，以确定会计教育的主要建议，以同时发展所需的批判性思维能力和会计技术知识。基于对高等教育的现有研究，我们建议会计教育者应用认知发展模型（反思性判断模型），以更好地理解学生的思想，并设计和运用更有效的学习活动。为了鼓励采用这种方法，我们总结了现有的会计教育建议，以改进批判性思维教育。尽管我们认为这些建议是有益的，但我们认识到只有有限的会计教育研究支持此处提出的想法。因此，我们建议采取行动呼吁在这一领域进行更多研究。我们的学生需要我们识别并采用教育实践，以培养具备快速变化的职业所需的批判性思维能力的毕业生。为了满足这一需求，研究人员应积极参与各项活动，以填补有关整个会计课程中学生批判性思维能力发展的经验数据的空白。此外，会计部门和教职员工需要支持教育研究和改进的学习设计。