The TEACHER Framework

Designing learning that develops independent thinkers

TEACHER is a framework for designing sessions, modules and whole programmes that move students from wanting the right answer towards making reasoned professional judgements. It stands for Think, Effort, Authentic Connections, Have Experiences and Reflect. It draws on Perry's scheme of intellectual development, Freire's dialogic pedagogy and Brown's research on psychological safety, and it was refined through teaching that ranged from first-year cohorts of more than 500 students to MBA simulations. It was developed in accounting, but its principles carry across any discipline.

Read the paper, free and open access
Rose, J. (2026) TEACHER: Operationalising teaching excellence in accounting education. Journal of Accounting Education, 74, 101027.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2026.101027
Download the paper

Why a discipline-specific framework?

Generic teaching excellence frameworks are valuable for quality assurance, but they cannot see the challenges that are specific to a discipline. Many students arrive believing accounting is about getting the numbers right, and they look to the lecturer for the one correct answer. Professional practice demands the opposite, which is judgement under uncertainty, professional scepticism and comfort with problems that have more than one defensible answer. Moving students on can feel uncomfortable and may lower satisfaction in the short term even as learning improves. TEACHER gives educators a deliberate way to design for that journey.

The five components

Think
Think challenges what students assume the subject is and asks them to work with ambiguity rather than hunt for a single right answer. In practice this means contested cases, starting a topic with its purpose and history before its mechanics, and teaching students to question claims, including outputs from generative AI.

Effort
Effort makes the effort that real learning needs explicit, and scaffolds active engagement rather than passive practice. In one first-year module of more than 500 students, three simple nudges (results from the previous cohort, published completion rates and randomised playful rewards) lifted participation in voluntary formative work from 10% to 96%.

Authentic Connections
Authentic Connections build the trust that lets students say "I don't know", challenge ideas and take intellectual risks. This might be a dialogic classroom where teacher and students sit around one table, a peer discussion platform, employer visits or conversations with practitioners.

Have Experiences
Have Experiences develops judgement through simulations, games and role-play in which students act rather than only read. Students might prepare a fictional company's records and then audit their own work, play a modified Monopoly game, or sit on the board of a simulated company for several weeks.

Reflect
Reflect develops evaluative judgement through structured self-feedback. Students compare their work with exemplars and peers, or analyse anonymised tutor feedback from a previous cohort to learn what quality looks like. Find out more about active self-feedback.

Designing sessions and whole courses

All five components operate at every level, but the emphasis shifts as students develop. Foundational modules often lean on Think and Effort, professional formation on Authentic Connections and Have Experiences, and advanced study on Reflect and Think. When you plan a programme, map which components each module foregrounds, so that students meet a coherent progression rather than a scatter of activities. When you plan a single session or assessment, ask which component is weakest in your current design and which two matter most for this cohort.

TEACHER also helps when a design stops working. When MBA students began treating generative AI as the source of correct answers, the assessment was redesigned rather than policed. The written report became an infographic analysing a company from an unusual employee perspective, with students building and justifying their own analytical framework. Every submission was different, and 92% of students agreed they were gaining employment-relevant skills.

A few questions to start with.

  • What do my students believe this subject is before I teach them, and how will I find out?

  • Where could I introduce a contested case with more than one defensible answer?

  • Which part of my module could become a simulation, game or role-play?

  • When should students reflect on their work before they hear feedback from me?

Free resources for educators

A workshop where a solution is walked through can be one of the most powerful learning experiences you offer students, yet a slide deck read aloud is passive exposure rather than a worked example. This free workbook suggests techniques for bringing solution briefings to life, with space to reflect on your own practice.

Download Making Solution Briefings Come Alive

Thinking differently about accounting

The Think component asks students to see accounting as a practice of judgement with social and ethical consequences, not a set of rules to apply. These pieces show what that can look like in the classroom.

Read Three uncomfortable activities that accelerate critical thinking for accounting students (BAFA Accounting Education SIG) Self-feedback on exemplars, competing expert viewpoints and starting from a blank page, and why the discomfort they create is worth it.

Rose, J., Christ, K.L. and Helliar, C. (2026) What has Modern Day Slavery got to do with accounting? In Baylis, R., Huxtable-Thomas, L., Rose, J., Rosier, E. and Strong, C. (eds) Integrating Public and Social Value into Business and Management Education: A Learning and Teaching Handbook. Ethicspress. Jenni co-edited the handbook and co-wrote this chapter.

In 2025 ICAEW invited Jenni to give a webinar, Teaching Ethics, on how she embeds ethics into first-year accounting teaching. Visit the ICAEW Academia and Education Community (free to join)

Explore Accounting Streams Jenni co-founded this free, open-access accounting textbook, which starts with the purpose and history of accounting before its mechanics and is used by more than 65,000 people in over 120 countries.

TEACHER and the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Accounting

The QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Accounting (2025) sets out what accounting graduates should achieve at threshold, typical, very good and excellent levels. It goes well beyond technical mastery, expecting critical, ethical and contextual understanding, sustainability and a focus on the public interest, which are areas where the standards themselves are still evolving and contested. Jenni was a member of the committee that wrote the statement, and the TEACHER paper shows how the framework turns the benchmark's ambitions into practical learning design.

Read the QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Accounting

Watch our ICAEW webinar on the new benchmark (free to view once you sign up)

Want the full framework, the evidence behind it and the mapping to the benchmark?
Download the free paper