‘Towards a mapping of the student world’: the identification of variation in students’ conceptions of, and motivations to learn, introductory accounting Ursula Lucas a, * , Jan H.F. Meyer b a Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Frenchay, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK b University of Durham, UK Received 15 March 2004; revised 18 October 2004; accepted 25 October 2004 Abstract This paper is concerned with a strand of educational research that seeks to support students in developing a better awareness and understanding of themselves as learners. Since it is difficult to ‘know’ our students individually there is value in knowing more about the dimensionality of variation within cohorts of students and the impact that this variation has upon their learning (i.e. how they vary in their engagement of accumulative (surface) or transformative (deep) learning processes). The paper identifies a means of identifying variation within a subject discipline: the linkage of a generic model of student learning (operationalised through the Reflections on Learning Inventory (RoLI q ) [Meyer, J.H.F., 2000. An overview of the development and application of the Reflections on Learning Inventory (RoLI). Paper presented at the First RoLI Symposium, Imperial College, University of London, September; Meyer, J.H.F., 2004. The domain of the RoLI and recent extensions to it. Paper presented at the Second RoLI Symposium, Imperial College, University of London, 17th February] with a subject-specific Expectations of Learning Accounting (ELAcc) Inventory. The power of this approach lies in its ability to identify those discipline-specific conceptions and motivations that may be related to accumulative or transformative learning processes. The linked RoLI and ELAcc inventory was administered to 1211 students of introductory accounting across five UK universities. The findings show that there are variations in conception and approach to learning between students who specialise in accounting and those who do not, and between male and female accounting students. They also show the ways in which different 0890-8389/$ - see front matter q 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bar.2004.10.002 The British Accounting Review 37 (2005) 177–204 www.elsevier.com/locate/bar * Corresponding author. Tel.: C44 117 344 3409; fax: C44 117 376 3851. E-mail address: ursula.lucas@uwe.ac.uk (U. Lucas).