Teaching death in Türkiye: The theme of death in illustrated children’s books

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine how the theme of death in preschool children’s literature is perceived by preschool teachers. For this purpose, four children’s books were examined by nine preschool teachers and their opinions were recorded. The research was carried out with a qualitative approach in accordance with the phenomenological research design. The examined books were evaluated in terms of the treatment of the mourning process, the treatment of the concept of death and formal characteristics. The results showed that the preschool teacher’s personal perceptions, prejudices, feelings and thoughts, apart from the scientific criteria, play a significant role in the handling of the books on the subject of death. On the other hand, it was seen that there is no consensus on the transfer of taboo topics such as death by the preschool teachers with correct and scientifically valid methods. For this reason, experimental studies can be planned and effective teaching methods can be developed on the teaching of taboo subjects, especially death, to preschool children. It can be argued that more research is needed to identify the sources of perceptions of teachers who play a leading role in teaching taboo topics to children, and according to the results of this study, they should receive more professional training on teaching taboo topics.

Keywords

• death
• children literature
• teachers’ opinions
• death education
• perception of death