Caroline Chaffer
Professor of Accounting Education

Profile

Biography

Caroline Chaffer is Associate Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students for the School for Business and Society.  Caroline is a graduate of Leeds University, and a Chartered Accountant. She qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and spent 15 years working in both practice and the financial services industry before deciding on a career change into accounting education in 2009. Before joining the School for Business and Society in 2012 Caroline was a Lecturer in Accounting and Finance at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Career

Caroline has responsibility for portfolio development and enhancement of the student experience for the School for Business and Society.  She has led several significant change programmes within the School, including harmonising teaching and learning practices following the merger of three departments and the introduction of stepped marking. She has also worked on several institutional projects including the introduction of online programmes to the University of York Management School and the diversification of student intake through articulation agreements with partner institutions and exploring different models to deliver transnational education.

Caroline has extensive experience of teaching international and UK, undergraduate, postgraduate students across all levels and executive and professional education, utilising fully online, hybrid and on campus delivery models. She has taught accounting and finance to both specialist and non-specialist students, including preparing students for professional accountancy qualifications. She currently co-teaches a large first year accounting and finance module to first year undergraduate students.

Caroline is committed to supporting the development of Teaching and Scholarship staff. She founded the Centre for Advanced Study of Management Education, an interdisciplinary space through which colleagues are invited to explore the future of teaching and scholarship in management education.

University roles

Caroline is an member of the University’s AI working group.

External roles

Caroline has held a number of external examiner roles including her current role at Northumbria University. She is a quality assessor for the Office for Students and a member of the British Academy of Management’s Management Knowledge and Education group with responsibility for the delivery of the Becoming and Educated Focused Professor Programme.  

Teaching

Other teaching

Caroline’s teaching draws on her professional background as a Chartered Accountant and she has taught across a broad range of specialist and non-specialist undergraduate and postgraduate modules.

Caroline was part of the team who introduced the first online programmes to the University of York Management School. She worked with a broad range of colleagues and an external partner to develop pedagogical principles and associated tools for the development of online provision and to project manage the production of content for the University of York Management School.

Research

Overview

Caroline is a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy and a Certified Business Management Educator. Caroline’s scholarship focuses on inclusion and skills development. Her Doctoral thesis draws Bernstein’s theory of pedagogic practice to examines how inequalities in education may manifest themselves in the classroom through the lens of employability. More recent work has examined optionality in assessment and exploring issues of inclusion in the classroom. 

Publications

Selected publications