Abstract
During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, digital learning has reshaped mathematics education in different ways. In particular, different social media platforms have acquired an unforeseen prominence as a way to enhance mathematics learning and to model somehow the face-to-face classroom interactions abruptly interrupted. How primary and secondary students have reacted or responded to these changes in the initial learning conditions is the main aim of this study. With this purpose in mind data was collected from 3179 students from the Gaza Strip by means of a validated rating scale and then a cluster analysis approach was applied that revealed the existence of three clusters. K-means cluster analysis was applied to analyze data as an exploratory approach to identify structures within the data. Also, chi-square was applied to identify differences between the clusters with regard to demographic characteristics. Regarding the grouping of participants in clusters the analysis performed lead to the identification of three clusters: Cluster 1, 2 and 3 had 2001, 824 and 354 cases, respectively. These clusters were grouped depending on employ social media platforms used by the students to reinforcement their mathematics learning. Participants in Cluster 3 exhibited the highest proficiency in the usage of social media for mathematics learning as compared to those in Cluster 1 and Cluster 2. This means that students in cluster 1 are more likely to exhibit negative attitudes and low levels in the skills related to using digital technology and the employment of social media in mathematics learning. The results showed that there were no significant differences between cluster-groups with regard to gender, age, and type of school. In contrast, significant differences were found among the three clusters with regards to the educational level of parents and the economic status of the family. However, the overall results show that digital learning is considered a positive response to the school closure in the time of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Highlights
Mulenga and Marbán [5] carried out a study aimed to respond to the question of whether COVID-19 is the gateway for digital-learning in mathematics education
The results showed that there were no significant differences between cluster-groups with regard to gender, age, and type of school (Tables 2–4)
In order to maintain the continuity of the education of students during the time of emergency, the whole mathematics education system has shifted for the first time to an online mode of education using different digital platforms
Summary
The teachers were continued to tutored using social media platforms to maintain the educating of students during this crisis. Disciplinary Differences in Adopting Digital Learning during Covid-19 Pandemic During these days as a result of the rapid outbreak of COVID-19, many studies have been carried out in the educational field, medical student education, with respect to COVID-19. Mulenga and Marbán [5] carried out a study aimed to respond to the question of whether COVID-19 is the gateway for digital-learning in mathematics education They found that some prospective teachers exhibit low skill levels in the employ of digital technology in mathematics learning and education during the COVID-19 outbreak. The attitudes of prospective teachers towards the employ of technology in learning mathematics were found to vary They carried out a study to identify the social media usage in learning and teaching of mathematics by pre-service teachers. The Gaza Strip in Palestine is one of these cities that still faces significant obstacles during this crisis and it is striving hard to ensure that students will not be interrupted from studying in the time of the deterioration of the living conditions from bad to worse
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
