More than imagination: Making social and critical accounting real

We offer a critical consideration of the roles of cognitive dissonance, imagination, and critical thinking in accounting education, suggesting that all three are important elements of critical and emancipatory accounting education, but that they must be set within a context that is rooted in the “real lives” of students and teachers alike, seeking to both understand the world and to challenge it.

► Supports a broad accounting education reform agenda. ► Examines the importance of both creating possibilities for, and dealing with, cognitive dissonance in accounting education. ► Expounds the importance of imagination in understanding present circumstances and developing responses to them. ► Argues that accounting education should be connected both to the lived experience of students (and teachers) and to the possibilities for generating alterative and different futures in the realm of experience. ► Links cognitive dissonance, imagination, and critical thinking to an educative process for energising personal and social change.