Abstract
The use of active teaching methods to develop pervasive skills has many advocates globally. As prior research
provides evidence of the value of role-playing exercises in the development of pervasive skills, the objective of
this article is to examine the extent to which South African (SA) accounting academics use role-playing
exercises (an active teaching method) as a method of instruction, and to establish their views on whether this
method can be used to develop pervasive skills. An electronically administered questionnaire was sent to SA
accounting academics. The findings of this article reveal a gap in the use of role-playing exercises by SA
accounting academics when compared to their counterparts globally. This gap can be attributed to the reluctance
of academics to develop pervasive skills due to time constraints, an already loaded syllabus, and the perception
that academics are not responsible for developing pervasive skills.