Effect Of Peer Tutoring and Teacher Centred Strategies on the Academic Performance of Hearing Impaired Students Comorbid with Learning Disabilities in Oyo State, Nigeria

The presence of learning disability as a major comorbid disability associated with hearing impairment compounds the learning difficulties experienced by these students. Most teachers of learners with these conditions who do not realise their learning challenges find it difficult to use appropriate teaching strategy to meet the learning needs. This study, therefore, was designed to determine the effect of peer tutoring on the academic performance of hearing impaired students comorbid with learning disabilities in Oyo State, Nigeria. The moderating effects of gender and degree of hearing loss were also examined. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. A pretest-posttest control group quasi experimental design with a 3x2x2 factorial matrix was adopted. Three schools for students with hearing impairment were purposively selected based on the availability of students with hearing impairment. Fourty students with hearing impairment were screened for learning disabilities with Myklebust rating scale. These students with mild and moderate hearing loss were further screened and selected with the use of AD629-Hybrid Diagnostic Audiometer. The schools were randomly assigned to treatment groups and control groups. The treatment lasted eight weeks. T-test was used to analyze the data collected. The study revealed peer-tutoring strategy more than teacher centered strategy improved the academic performance of hearing impaired students with learning disabilities in Ibadan, Nigeria particularly among females with moderate hearing loss. The study also revealed that females in the two treatment groups had better academic performance than the control group. This therefore implies that students learn better and faster when they learn together because they see themselves as equal without seeing anyone among them as being superior. Therefore, these strategies should be adopted by teachers of with hearing impairment whose notice that students exhibit traits of learning disabilities with poor academic performance