Impact of prior content and meta‐cognitive knowledge on students' performance in an introductory accounting course

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of five factors, reflecting students' diversity in prior content and metacognitive knowledge, on students' academic performance in the introductory accounting course. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a conceptual framework of prior knowledge, five factors are hypothesised to have an impact on students' performance. They are: prior accounting knowledge, age, gender, intended academic major, and first language. A self‐administered questionnaire is completed by students enrolled in the compulsory introductory accounting course at a large multi‐campus NZ university. Multivariate analysis is carried out to test the research hypotheses and the predictive ability of the five independent variables on students' performance. Findings – Consistent with the educational psychology literature, prior content knowledge has a significant impact. Students' metacognitive knowledge, which differs according to their language and gender, also has a significant effect on students' performance. Research limitations/implications – The low R 2 in the regression model suggests that, although some of the study variables are significant, a high proportion of variation in academic performance remains unexplained by the model. The results may also not be representative of student population in general as information is elicited from students from one particular university. Future research could extend the sample to more than one tertiary institution and consider the effect of other potential variables such as students' intrinsic motivation and learning strategies. Originality/value – Unlike many prior studies which lacked a theoretical framework to support their research, this study proposes a conceptual framework drawn from the education psychology literature for examining students' performance in the introductory accounting course.