Abstract
BackgroundWhen beginning higher education studies in business and economics students bring with them diverse knowledge and experience in the field, which could affect their success in the program. Differences in prior economic education pose challenges to the teachers in higher education as they have to decide which knowledge of economics the students have. This is important for preparing the lessons in higher education. In this paper, we investigate how prior economic education influences beginning university students’ knowledge of economics.MethodsWe administered items from the German adaptations of the test of economic literacy and the test of understanding college economics, both developed by the national council on economic education, to assess the general knowledge of economics and specific knowledge of micro- and macroeconomics of 511 beginning students at two universities in Germany.ResultsParticipants who had completed vocational training or a course in economics as a major subject at secondary school (“Leistungskurs Wirtschaft”) performed significantly better on items relating to general economics and macroeconomics; however, there was no significant difference in performance on items relating to microeconomics between the comparison groups. Attendance of an upper secondary school specializing in economics (“Wirtschaftsgymnasium”) has no significant effect when controlling for these two learning opportunities and other personal characteristics. In addition, we performed regression-analytic modelling to examine the correlation between economic knowledge and personal factors such as gender, grade on university entrance examination, and migration background and found effects depended on the economic content area assessed.ConclusionsThe study demonstrates that there is a heterogeneity in students’ knowledge of economics when beginning higher education studies in business and economics. The results of this research highlight the importance of designing target-oriented teaching methods that take into consideration the study-relevant (prior) knowledge of beginning students.
Highlights
When beginning higher education studies in business and economics students bring with them diverse knowledge and experience in the field, which could affect their success in the program
Problem Beginning students of business and economics differ in the education they obtained before starting their university programs in economics: While some have completed vocational training,1 others have completed courses in economics as a major subject at secondary school (Bouley et al 2015; Brückner et al 2015b; Hillmert and Jacob 2003)
Investigation has been made into the impact of having completed vocational training (Beck and Krumm 1994; Brückner et al 2015b; Happ et al 2016b; Van den Berg and Hofman 2005), a course in economics as a major subject at secondary school (Brasfield et al 1993; Gill and Gratton-Lavoie 2011; Shim et al 2009; Walstad et al 2007) or attendance of an upper secondary school specializing in economics (Sczesny and Lüdecke-Plümer 1998) on knowledge of economics, these student-related variables generally have been examined in isolation of each other
Summary
When beginning higher education studies in business and economics students bring with them diverse knowledge and experience in the field, which could affect their success in the program. Differences in prior economic education pose chal‐ lenges to the teachers in higher education as they have to decide which knowledge of economics the students have. This is important for preparing the lessons in higher education. We investigate how prior economic education influences beginning university students’ knowledge of economics
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