Browsing by Author "Valtanen, Mervi"

The aim of this study was to examine how the texts of Finnish children’s picture books describe death and what kind of expressions are used when discussing death. In addition, a goal of the study was to reflect whether the picture books could be used in educational use, especially in preventive death education for primary school aged children. Previous research shows that teachers experience significant insecurity and helplessness when discussing death with their students, which may lead them to avoid the topic completely. Research about death from an educational point of view has also strongly focused on examining situations where death has already happened, and the subject of death has not been widely researched with taking in consideration preventive death education’s positive significance in children’s well-being. The study was conducted as a qualitative study using theory driven content analysis and theory guided content analysis as the analysis methods. The analysis was based on Tamm and Granqvist’s (1995) category system in which they present that child’s concept of death is formed by biological, psychological, and metaphysical death concepts. In addition, the analysis was guided by previous research, where it has been noticed that both direct and indirect expressions are used when discussing death in children’s literature. The data consisted of texts from ten Finnish picture books published between 2013 and 2023. According to the analysis the texts of picture books focused on describing the sadness of those grieving their loved ones, which was described to be a strong, but also momentary feeling. Other emotions were described far less frequently compared to sadness. The texts also often presented an idea of another world where deceased can continue living after dying. Death was rarely presented as a completely infinite or unexpected incident. Biological aspects of death were described less than psychological or metaphysical aspects. This may be caused by the fact that based on the analysis the books are mostly meant to bring readers peer support and comfort. Over half of the analysed books used direct expressions when discussing death, but the use of indirect expressions was also visible in the data. Based on the analysis the books are not directly suitable to be used in educational use, because they tended to give a partly one-sided portrayal of what death is and how it affects people. There were also references to certain belief systems in the texts. In addition, they seemed to be written with the idea of offering peer support in mind. Therefore, means for teachers to discuss death with their students in a way that enhances students’ well-being need to be examined more. Overall, more research about death from an educational point of view is strongly needed in order to learn more about how the topic should be handled in education and how teachers can support child’s growth and development within the subject of death.