Accounting Research

Time management is a skill that every student should not only know, but also apply. A lot of university students complain about running out of time when asked to do a certain task, they get frustrated because they are not able to make it before the deadline. Time management is extremely important, especially when it comes to university students because it will boost their grades and enhance their productivity (Laurie & Hellsten, 2002). However, most of the time students face problems like task aversion and uncertainty, so they start to procrastinate because they lack organizational skills. As a result, students will not be able to organize duties according to their priorities, so they get distracted easily, ending up procrastinating. As we can see, time management is quite essential to any university student, and it is one of the keys to higher academic achievements (Kelly, 2004). Interest is often thought of as a process that contributes to learning and achievement.That is, being interested in a topic is a mental resource that enhances learning, whichthen leads to better performance and achievement (Hidi, 1990). Indeed, research has demonstrated that both situational and individual interest promote attention, recall, taskpersistence, and effort (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002; Hidi, 1990; Hidi & Renninger,2006) Mastery of subject matter enables the teacher to teach and explain the subject matter content well and make their learners conceive clearly. There are times when learners encounter intellectual concepts too difficult for learners to comprehend which would only take the intervention of a teacher to simplify or give alternatives responses. This ability is influenced by the teachers’knowledge and understanding of the subject matter (Wilson and Wineburg, 1988), which gives them ability to appropriately respond to questions from the learners. Experience matters, but more is not always better. The impact of experience is strongest during the first few years of teaching; after that, marginal returns diminish. A number of CALDER studies confirm findings from existing research that, on average, brand new teachers are less effective than those with some experience under their belts (Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor 2007a, 2007b; Harris and Sass 2007; Kane, Rockoff, and Staiger 2006; Ladd 2008; Sass 2007). Early-career experience has a clear payoff in teacher effectiveness,1 and the impact is stronger than the effect of most other observable teacherrelated variables including advanced degrees, teacher licensure tests scores, National Board certification at the elementary level, and class size (Clotfelter et al. 2007a; Ladd 2008; Sass 2007). Literature Review on Factors Affecting Students’ Performance Up to date many studies have been developed concerning the factors influence students’ performance such as demographic, active learning, student attendance, extracurricular activities, and peers influence

and course assessment. A review of the literature have indicated that student attitudes toward study, study habits and strategic learning, student psychological characteristics, learning style, family background, teachers role and many others are closely related to students’ academic performance (Eccles & Wigfield, 1985; Eccles & Harold, 1993; Hanson, 1994, Ali et al.,2009). Gough and Hall (1964) mentioned that prediction of student performance in the medical school can be made by mean of the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and this is supported by Tutton study in 1993. Other instruments such as Eysenek Personality Inventory or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory greatly enhanced the prediction of students’ performance in the medical school (Roesslet, et al., 1978; Lipton et al., 1984; Weiss, 1988).

In this study the literature search for factors affecting students’ academic performance will be concentrated on student’s characteristics, parent’s characteristics, teacher’s characteristics and college factors.