Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting Education

Alan Sangster and Giovanna Scataglinibelghitar

Accounting Education, 2010, vol. 19, issue 4, 423-438

Abstract: Luca Pacioli, was a Franciscan friar born in Borgo San Sepolcro in what is now Northern Italy in 1446 or 1447. It is believed that he died in the same town on 19 June 1517. He is best remembered for his 615-page mathematical compendium, Summa de Arithmetica Geometria Proportioni et Proportionalita, published in 1494; and for his friendship with Leonardo da Vinci. Many accountants perceive his greatest contribution as being the 27-page treatise on double-entry bookkeeping and business contained within his Summa. Today, we still teach doubl-entry bookkeeping following the principles set down by Pacioli, and all manual and computerized accounting systems owe much of their processing logic to the principles and processes he described. However, there is another aspect to this treatise that has been largely overlooked: in it, Pacioli set down not only the principles of double entry bookkeeping but also presented an approach to teaching the subject that is unique and largely forgotten. This paper considers Pacioli's pedagogic approach within the educational environment in which he worked. It concludes that Luca Pacioli was a man of pedagogic insight and expertise who knew how to pitch his presentation so as to engage his students and maximize their likelihood of learning and understanding the material he presented using techniques that, even today, would be considered innovative. In doing so, he brings a subject (double entry bookkeeping) to life that is in sharp contrast to the abstract and often meaningless (in terms of context) way in which it is often taught today.

Keywords: Pacioli; double-entry bookkeeping; Summa Arithmetica; pedagogy; humanism; abbaco; business education; cognitive apprenticeship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09639284.2010.501955 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:accted:v:19:y:2010:i:4:p:423-438

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAED20

DOI: 10.1080/09639284.2010.501955

Access Statistics for this article

Accounting Education is currently edited by Richard Wilson

More articles in Accounting Education from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().