Effect of Cognitive Restructuring and Gender on Learning Difficulties in the Covid- 19 era among Government Secondary Schools Students in Kaduna Metropolis, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigated the effect of cognitive restructuring technique and gender on learning difficulties in the Covid -19 era among Government Secondary School Students in Kaduna Metropolis, Nigeria. The study employed quasi-experimental of pretest and posttest group design, in which selected participants were assigned to treatment group. The population of the study consisted of one hundred and forty five (145) students with learning difficulties from senior secondary school (SS1), both male and females between the age of fourteen to sixteen (14-16) years. Stratified sampling technique was used to select two schools from two 2 Education Zones. Purposeful sampling technique was used in selecting the participants. The sample includes 15 students identified from their school records with the problems of learning difficulties were selected and used for this study. Two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study and were tested at p < 0.05 alpha level of significance. Independent t- test statistic was used for testing hypothesis one, Results from data analysis revealed that there is significant difference of Cognitive restructuring Technique on Learning difficulties among secondary school students (t = 2.79, p = 0.011). Hypothesis two was tested using ANCOVA statistic. It was revealed that there is significant difference of cognitive restructuring Technique on learning difficulties between male and female government secondary school students in favour of male (f = 4.13, p = 0.006). It was recommended that school psychologists, teachers and counsellors should be exposed to training workshop on cognitive restructuring in readdressing learning difficulties more especially on female among students in government secondary school in Kaduna Metropolis among others.

Keywords: Cognitive restructuring, Learning Difficulties, Gender Covid -19.