Browsing by Subject "Lapsuus"

The purpose of my study is to provide a holistic view of childhood grief from the perspective of student teachers in early childhood education. The aim is to identify typical ways of mourning in childhood and the meanings given to childhood grief in the students' grief narratives. The research data consists of grief narratives written by early childhood education students at the University of Helsinki. The data was collected as part of the research project Children's Grief and Cultural Practices of Mourning in Early Childhood Education funded by the Academy of Finland in 2021-2025. I use a narrative research approach to conduct the study. My study can be considered as a dialogue between the students' narratives, my interpretations of the narratives and theoretical knowledge. In the analysis of the data, I have applied both analysis of narratives and narrative analysis. In the light of the results, grief experienced in childhood appears as a holistic experience of loss, both personal and socially shared by the individual, characterised by meaningfulness and the co-existence of other emotions. The results of my study do not contradict previous research on grief, but support previous findings from a new perspective.