COVID-19 Pandemic in Nigeria and Attitudes towards Mathematics Homeschooling among Pre-Tertiary Students

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan, the Peoples Republic of China in December 2019 and it spread to Nigeria on February 27, 2020, has made the closure of educational institutions in the country a must and homeschooling inevitable. Aside from social distancing and putting on of the armour of basic health hygiene and using nose masks, COVID-19 pandemic has no curative vaccine to stop its further spread. This study investigated Nigerian pre-tertiary students' attitudes towards mathematics homeschooling during the period of COVID-19 pandemic. Deploying instrumentation survey research design, three research questions were answered and the sample consisted of 342 pre-tertiary students in South-West, Nigeria. Data collected through an internet-based questionnaire created using Google forms and loaded on the WhatsApp social media for the dissemination to the target sample were analysed using frequency, mean, standard deviation, independent samples t-test, and exploratory factor analysis. Results showed that attitudes towards mathematics homeschooling scale was a multi-dimensional construct consisting of four interpretable factor structure of distraction and parent negative attitude, home enjoyment, school enjoyment, and competition and parent positive attitude. Gender was not a factor in the attitudes towards mathematics homeschooling. Besides, pre-tertiary students recorded a high level of attitudes towards mathematics homeschooling during the period of COVID-19 pandemic. In line with these results, it was recommended that researchers and mathematics educators could adopt this assessment tool in exploring the background predictors and educational imports of attitudes towards mathematics homeschooling in mathematics learning milieu during the period of any pandemic