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Investigating the Areas of Student Difficulty in Chemistry Curriculum: A Case Study in Qatar

The exploratory study focused on the identification of difficult topics in Chemistry in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) curriculum. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from thirty students by simple random sampling technique. Interviews and focus group discussions were carried out to seek clarifications on some of the responses to the questionnaire questions and to elicit detailed explanations of the causes of the perceived difficulties. A multiple-choice test was also administered for the purpose of triangulation. Frequencies and means were used to answer the research question. The findings indicate that the causes of poor performance could be categorised into five groups i.e.: nature of concepts, prior knowledge, access to the language of instruction, teaching processes and mathematical efficacy. The study recommends a more structured form of curriculum mapping of all topics and sequencing of topics over the two-year period of study of IGCSE Chemistry and suggests further research on misconceptions and their origins in the subject matter.