I have occasionally written about the need for a professor to develop a mature worldview. More so than that, we all (whether professor, student, or professional) should consciously develop a world view. Yes, a world-view is a good thing. Although there are three accepted forms for spelling the term, it is not a difficult concept.
A worldview is one person’s mental model of his/her reality. It is a personal framework for organizing ideas, attitudes and theories about some aspect of the world in which a person lives. When viewed in its totality, it is a personal description of the way all things work.
When we are young and/or inexperienced, our view is limited because we haven’t seen that much of the world. Thirty two years ago when I first studied accounting, my worldview of accounting was pretty much limited to what was immediately in front of my nose (an only-in-front-of-nose-view). Likewise, thirty years ago when I taught my first accounting class, my view of the world of accounting education was very limited. It was not mature. Never-the-less, I had a mental model of sorts. Not a framework, it was more like a clothes hamper where I tossed my ideas and a few attitudes. Somewhere along the path of my life, I built a few theories for explaining how a few isolated things worked (I always had teaching tendencies). Eventually the clothes hamper was so crammed, disorganized and messy, I had to develop a framework for classifying and sorting everything. So I worked on it. And voilà–I had a worldview.
I’ve been asked to post a reading list for developing an accounting worldview. I can’t, because it doesn’t work that way. Here’s why.
The Summa 