Pandemic and (extra)ordinary changes in education between theory and practices

The Pandemic period radically changed the traditional teaching and learning processes and triggered the adoption of online lectures, new teaching material and new tools for interactions. Distance education activities (lessons, exercises, exams, student reception, etc.) have a significant impact on the methods and type of learning by students and bring both positive and negative effects, including the risk of generating stress and a loss of interpersonal relationships. Starting form the international literature about the state of art of teaching accounting, with a specific focus on social and environmental accounting and reporting(Gray, Owen, Adams, 1996, Tinker, Gray, 2003; Tinker, 2005; Gray, Guthrie, 2007), the paper has the objective to understand the future education challenge and to provide an answer to the following resarch questions that drive the study: RQ1-What are the new challenges in increasing students’ involvement in higher education during and after Pandemic? RQ2-What are the new challenges in increasing students’ involvement in accounting and accountability education during and after Pandemic? To this end an explorative analysis was implemented from May 2020 to march 2021 an reiterated in 2022. The survey involved the students attending accounting courses in three Italian Universities. Findings drawn from the study provide useful insights to open new paths relative to the teaching approaches (tools and methods based on the adoption of digital technologies) as well as to the contents of the accounting courses and teaching programs, called to incorporate sustainability issues. Therefore, the work aims to call for the responsibility of accounting scholars, in a Pandemic and post-pandemic scenario in triggering students’ competences, skills and behaviors toward sustainability addressing attention on their active role in promoting teaching activities (i.e. undergraduates and master courses, specific laboratories, Phd courses, etc), as well as in involving practitioners (included managers and entrepreneurs) and students in adopting new accounting tools and operationalizing accountability changes resting on the adoption of new tecnologies.