Abstract

• The main purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in teaching biology concepts of science teachers at high school level. Especially, the difficulties in terms of content, instructional resources, instructional time, teachers’ professional development, students’ attitudes, class size and classroom management, and methods of teaching were examined. Moreover, difficult content areas from Grade Ten biology textbook were also investigated. Fifty nine (59) high schools from ten townships of two districts: east and west, in Yangon Region were randomly selected. One hundred and thirty (130) biology teachers from the selected schools participated in this study. Two instruments: a questionnaire for teachers’ difficulties in teaching biology concepts by seven dimensions and observation checklist were used. According to the results from questionnaire, the difficulties of biology teachers in teaching biology concepts were presented by percentage in each dimension. According to the teachers’ responses, the biology teachers were having difficulties in all factors. The highest percentages of difficulties faced by biology teachers were due to the instructional time, instructional resources and teaching methods while the lowest percentage was ‘teachers’ professional development’. Difficult content areas that teachers mostly responded were ‘plant and animal tissues’ because of the weakness of instructional resources especially. These results showed that biology teachers are facing the mentioned difficulties to some extent in teaching biology concepts.