The effect of systems thinking based accounting education on students' learning approaches, attitudes and academic achievements

System dynamics is a method that deals with the behavior of complex systems and is used in the control of nonlinear dynamics and their feedback loops in mathematics, physics, and engineering. Besides these system dynamics allows applications that can be applied to human behavior, including cognitive and social psychology, economics, and other social sciences. The system dynamics approach has been used in many disciplines such as engineering, physics, urbanization, biology, and economics and paved the way for important developments in these fields. It has been proven that the approach makes important contributions to educational sciences as well. It has been reported that in schools where the system-thinking approach in education is applied, students tend to various interests, embody abstract concepts, gain a holistic perspective and deal with more realistic issues. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of systems thinking based accounting education on students' learning approaches, attitudes towards accounting course and academic achievement, and to test the applicability of this approach in accounting education and introduce a new teaching method to the field. The sample group of the research consists of 64 students, 30 from the Accounting and Tax Department of Adıyaman University Kâhta Vocational School and 34 from the Banking and Insurance Department, in fall semester of 2019-2020 academic year. In the research, an experimental design with the pretest-posttest control group was used. The group in which the teaching method designed according to the systems thinking approach was applied was determined as the experiment group and the group in which the traditional narrative-based teaching method was applied was determined as the control group. These groups were determined by random selection among the participants. The subject of the experimental application, "Process Costing System" that is a basic subject of cost accounting, was treated according to the systems thinking approach to the experimental group and the traditional narrative-based approach to the control group. Three different measurement tools were used to answer the research questions. The data obtained from Accounting Lesson Attitude Scale, Knowledge Approaches Scale and Academic Achievement Test were analyzed and interpreted by using descriptive statistics, dependent groups t-test, independent group t-test and correlation analysis. According to the posttest data conducted at the end of the experimental research, it was determined that there is a statistically significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the academic achievement scores of the experimental and control group students. It was determined that the learning approaches and attitude scores did not show a statistically significant difference between the groups. Therefore, it has been understood that accounting education based on systems thinking approach has a significant effect on the academic achievement of students, but has no effect on learning approaches and attitude scores. As a result, it has been determined that by using the systems thinking approach in accounting education, students better understand the course subjects, the connections between the subjects and the cause and effect relationships. Moreover, it has been observed that students are more successful in problem solving since they gain a holistic perspective on course topics with a systems thinking approach. Keywords: Accounting Education, Systems Thinking, Learning Approaches, Attitude, Academic Success.