‘There is no right or wrong answer’
Swedish preschool teachers’ reflections on the didactics of death
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21718634 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tünde Puskas (0000-0003-3449-2384, Linköping University, corresponding author), Fredrik Jeppsson (0000-0001-6787-7788, Linköping University), Anita Andersson (Linköping University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 438-452 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1463-9491 • E-ISSN: 1463-9491 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/14639491211049480 |
| OpenAlex | W3209023990 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 30 |
This study is part of a larger project with the general aim of developing the ability of preschool teachers to reflect critically on questions, topics and theories related to different understandings of death(s). The article is based on three focus-group interviews with a focus on how preschool teachers reflect on what, how, why and when they teach about death and death-related issues. The results show that preschool teachers consider that it is important in early childhood education to teach about death because death is a fundamental aspect of life in daily reality, and they consider it to be their task to comfort a child in grief, as well as care for the well-being of the group. However, much of the time, they avoid teaching about biological death relative to concrete goals that the children are to achieve in understanding what death implies. Instead, they use child-responsive, improvisational teaching that is intended to calm and comfort the children. The content of the teaching arises at the intersection of expert knowledge in talking about death as an irreversible outcome of natural processes and the preschool teachers’ own beliefs and ideas about death, dying and an afterlife. As a consequence, the biological conceptions of death coexist with the teachers’ own beliefs in an afterlife, reflecting a dualistic thinking within which culturally constructed beliefs coexist with biological views
Afterlife · Denial · Developmental psychology · Epistemology · Grief · Pedagogy · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · Thanatology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
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The Meaning That Young Israeli Adults Ascribe to the Least Undesirable Death
Swedish religion education
Young children's understanding of death
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Education for Death
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The Coexistence of Natural and Supernatural Explanations Across Cultures and Development
Semiotic theory on qualitative interviewing using stimulus texts
The methodology of Focus Groups
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |