Title: Prior knowledge and academic performance in first year accounting course

Authors: Ismaila Yusuf; Samuel Joseph; James Uchenna Okpe

Addresses: Department of Accounting, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, Nigeria ' Department of Accounting, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, Nigeria ' Department of Accounting, Federal University Dutsin-Ma, Katsina State, Nigeria

Abstract: The study is motivated by the poor performance of students in their first year accounting course despite meeting up with the minimum entry requirement based on NUC BMAS and UTME. The paper examines the impact of prior knowledge from the conceptual and metacognitive dimensions on academic performance in the first year accounting course. Using filters, 408 students of the Federal University Dutsinma, Nigeria in the 2012/2013 to 2015/2016 academic sessions were adopted for the study. Ordinal regression adopting the ordered logit procedure in STATA was carried out. Prior knowledge was found to have significant impact on the performance in the first year accounting course. Findings showed that the joint impact of conceptual and metacognitive knowledge outweighs that of either conceptual or metacognitive. We therefore recommend among others that a composite scoring system incorporating conceptual and metacognitive knowledge variables be designed and used for admission placement in BSc in Accounting, BSc in Management and BSc in Economics.

Keywords: prior knowledge; conceptual knowledge; metacognitive knowledge; accounting course; ordinal regression; Nigerian Universities Commission; NUC; benchmark minimum academic standard; BMAS; Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination; UTME; accounting education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHES.2018.092383

International Journal of Higher Education and Sustainability, 2018 Vol.2 No.1, pp.1 - 16

Received: 28 Jun 2017
Accepted: 24 Aug 2017

Published online: 17 Jun 2018 *

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