The Pedagogy of death and special needs education. A phenomenological study

ABSTRACT

There are very few studies relating the Pedagogy of Death to special needs education. The objective of this study was to explore perceptions of death education among the special school educational community. The study adopted a qualitative, phenomenological design, using interviews and discussion groups to encourage the emergence of participants’ perceptions and understandings of death education in schools. 22 staff members and parents from 2 special schools took part. The main results were: participants had favourable attitudes towards death education in schools; educators lacked training in the Pedagogy of Death; planned educational responses to death were absent in schools; death had significant impact in special schools; and the positive aspects of special needs education could be transferred to ordinary education. The conclusions stress the need to train educators and parents and to include death in the education offered at special schools, in an individualised and personalised way.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy of death
• death education
• special schools
• phenomenology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) (Spain) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) under Grant [EDU2017-85296-R].