The effect of instructional strategy and cognitive level of development on tax knowledge and application

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional strategies on how students learn and apply tax knowledge. Accounting students participated in an experiment to determine whether the choice of a procedural or conceptual instructional method enhanced the students' ability to solve problems. Further, the effect of cognitive level of development and success in answering questions was investigated.Results show that the method of instruction was instrumental in solving routine problems but not in solving novel problems. Students with a high (formal) level of cognitive development were better able to solve both routine and novel problems than students of medium (transitional) and low (concrete) cognitive development.