The Students’ Prior Knowledge at The Department of History Education within Tertiary Education

Abstract

Prior knowledge is the knowledge acquired by students before gaining novel knowledge. This study aims to ident ify students’ prior knowledge at the Department of History Education within university setting. The study applied descriptive statistics with the aid of SPSS. The sample involved in this study was 101 freshmen. The results showed that the students’ prior knowledge was rather low. This was indicated by the score tests showing that the average student were not able to reach the minimum passing criteria. Factual knowledge was found to be at excellent level. The findings highlight the need for schools and higher education institutions to ident ify students’ prior knowledge to better ident ify their strengths and weaknesses.