Bibliotherapy as a remedy for aliteracy in a sample of secondary school students: reports from Ilesa, Southwest, Nigeria

ABSTRACT There had been a great deal of concern about lack of interest with poor attitude and behaviour being exhibited towards reading by secondary school students. This study examined bibliotherapy – the use of books to heal as a remedy for tackling aliteracy among secondary school students in Ilesa, Southwest, Nigeria. Pre-test–post-test control group quasi-experimental design was used and the data were analyzed by frequency distribution with Paired Sample Test. Out of the 18 students involved in the study, 8 (44.6%) were male while 10 (55.6%) were female. There was a significant main effect of bibliotherapy on aliteracy test (M = 71.28, SD = 15.32) and post-test groups (M = 49.53, SD = 10.63) t (17)  = 4.34, p = 0.00 < 0.05 but there was no significant difference of treatment (bibliotherapy) (M = 1.38, SD = 0.50) and gender on aliteracy (M = 1.55, SD = 0.51) t (17)  = 1.00, p = 0.33 > 0.05. Thus, the efficacy of bibliotherapy to tackle aliteracy is independent of the gender of the aliterates, provided both genders are exposed to the treatment without bias.