Jack Gladys Uzezi^1,, Danjuma Ezekiel¹, Abdul-Kadir Musa Auwal¹

Poor performance in chemistry is an indication that students have difficulty in learning and mastering the content and applying these when they are under examination conditions. This study therefore was conducted to identify concepts perceived as difficult by chemistry students in Jalingo metropolis. One hundred and ninety eight SS3 or 12^th grade students were randomly selected from six secondary schools offering science subjects within Jalingo metropolis. The data collection tool was Chemistry Difficult Concepts Identification Questionnaires which consisted of two sections. Means and standard deviation where used to analyzed the data collected while t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses. Findings showed that the students perceived 12 concepts (63.16 %) as difficult out of the 19 concepts in the questionnaire. Results based on gender showed that, the males perceived 15 (78.95%) concepts in the SSS3 chemistry concepts as difficult, while the females perceived eleven (57.89%) concepts as difficult. On the other hand, single-sex (boys only) perceived 17 concepts as difficult, girls only perceived 13 and co-educational perceived 12 concepts as difficult respectively. While students in rural and urban schools perceived each 11 varied concepts as difficult. The study also revealed that there was a significant influence of gender, school nature and school location on students’ concepts perceived as difficult in the chemistry syllabus of the Nigerian science curriculum. It was however; recommended that more time should be allocated to chemistry for effective teaching of the identified difficult concepts and usage of student-oriented practical activities, as this would help to concretize learnt concepts and reduce poor performances of students in both internal and external examinations.

conceptual difficulties, Nigerian science curriculum, perceived difficult concepts, chemistry syllabus