Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of guided and independent reading strategies on the comprehension of informational texts among students with learning disabilities in Ibadan. The influence of gender and age of participants were also examined. The participants were 64 students with learning disabilities in the area of reading in Junior Secondary School II. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used while the pretest-posttest, control group quasi-experimental research with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix was adopted. The random sampling technique was used to select the schools, while the purposive sampling technique was used to select participants. The schools were randomly assigned to the two experimental (guided reading strategy =21; independent reading strategy =25) and the control =18 groups. The instruments utilised for the study were: Academic School Records of students; Slosson Intelligence Test (r=0.91); Screening Checklist for Suspected Learning Disabilities (r=0.81), Reading Disability Screening Test (r=0.75) and Comprehension of Informational Texts Scale (r=0.82). Treatment lasted for eight weeks. Data were analysed through Analysis of Covariance and Bonferroni post hoc test at 0.05 level of significance. The result suggests that there was a significant main effect in the reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities in the area of reading using the guided and independent reading strategies as compared to the conventional strategy (F(2; 51)=3.29; P<0.05; ɳ2=0.11). Independent reading had the highest mean score of (42.27); followed by the guided reading strategy with a mean score of (40.86) and the control group had the lowest mean score of (32.13). The findings also revealed that there is no significant main effect of age and gender. This means that gender and age are not predictors of the comprehension of informational texts among students with learning disabilities in the area of reading. On the basis of the findings, it was recommended that guided and independent reading strategies should be effectively utilised and applied in the teaching and learning of informational texts among students with learning disabilities in the area of reading.