Effect Teacher’s Competence and Student’s Prior Knowledge on Improvement of Learning Outcomes Suarman Suarman 1 and Nurul Hikmah 2 1 Economic Education, Faculty of Teaching and Education, Universitas Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia 2 Alumnus of Economic Education, School of Postgraduate Studies, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia {cun_unri, hikmahnurul472}@yahoo.com Keywords: Learning Outcomes, Teacher’s Competence, Student’s Prior Knowledge. Abstract: This study aims to determine the effect of teacher’s competence and student’s prior knowledge to student’s learning outcomes. This research was conducted because of the low student’s learning outcomes. The hypothesis of this study, namely, teacher’s competence and student’s prior knowledge are the determinants of learning outcomes which have a positive influence. This study uses survey method with sample in this study were taken as many as 110 students. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis. The results showed that the teacher’s competence have no significant effect on learning outcomes and the student’s prior knowledge has a significant effect on learning outcomes. 1 INTRODUCTION One of the education issues are still become the international concern in the last decade is on student’s learning outcomes. Research reveal that students are usually worried about their academic results. Concerns arise because of learning problems and demands of the school, including the management of time to study, fear of failure in exams, and bad grades (McInerney et al, 2012). If the students are capable to get the good learning outcomes at the end of the learning process, students are said to be successful. In addition, function of learning outcomes can also indicate the quality of an educational institution and the quality of teachers in it (Hamilton-Ekeke, 2013). Improved student’s learning outcomes reflect an improved quality of education. Similarly, on the contrary, decreased student’s learning outcomes, describe the low quality of education. High learning results become the hope of all parties, both students, parents, and the school. But many of students who have not reached the mastery of economic learning shows indicators of less successful teaching and learning activities conducted. According to data from the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Republic of Indonesia, for the social study programs, the average value of the subjects of Economics at the National Exam of Senior High School in 2015 decreased as big as 2.18 when compared to 2014. In addition, the average value of National Exam to state high school and private high school in 2015 was 61.29 while in 2016 average of national exam was 54.78, decreasing as big as 6.51 points. Although the codes on the National Exam are differentiated, the student’s learning outcomes should be stable and even increase year by year. If the condition continues to be allowed to decline, feared the students' learning outcomes become low and the goal of education does not materialize. Furthermore, the condition will have impact on further education, future, career opportunities, social status attainment, and welfare of the students (Levpušcek & Zupancic, 2009). So, this problem is very important to be solved because it is an issue that always be faced in the education scope. According to Slameto (2010), in the learning process, there are several factors that can affect learning outcomes, namely internal factors and external factors. Internal factors are factors that affect learning that comes from within the student, which includes physical factors or health factors, psychological factors, such as intelligence, attention, interest, talent, motivation, maturity, and readiness, and fatigue factors. While external factors are factors that affect learning that comes from outside of student 666 Suarman, S. and Hikmah, N. Effect Teacher’s Competence and Student’s Prior Knowledge on Improvement of Learning Outcomes. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Economic Education and Entrepreneurship (ICEEE 2017), pages 666-669 ISBN: 978-989-758-308-7 Copyright © 2017 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved