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

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.