Abstract

• The main aim of this study is to investigate understanding of high school chemistry teachers and their instructional practices in chemistry teaching. In this paper, questionnaire survey method, one of the descriptive methods, was used. Forty-eight high schools were selected with the adoption of stratified random sampling technique from Yangon Region. The participants of the sample were high school chemistry teachers. In order to get the required data, the questionnaire having sixty items with five point Likert-type scales and demographic data were developed. The questionnaire was based on five dimensions for teachers’ understanding: teaching profession, curricular context, instructional strategies, students’ learning needs and assessment. The questionnaire for instructional practices was based on three dimensions: structured practices, student-oriented practices and enhanced activities. The internal consistency of the pilot test was 0.837 and 0.8. The collected data of this study were systematically analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software version as it is widely used in quantitative research. The descriptive analysis techniques were used to tabulate percentages, means and standard deviations. The results showed that the percentages of moderate level of chemistry teachers’ understanding were more than high and low level of understanding teaching and learning aspects. According to Pearson product moment correlation result, it was found that there was a positive, moderate relationship between chemistry teachers’ understanding of teaching-learning situation and instructional practices, (r=.391).It can be interpreted that teachers’ understanding conveyed the associated ideas in chemistry teaching.