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Do adolescents want death to be included in their education?

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Abstract

This study sets out to ascertain adolescents’ attitudes and opinions towards death education. To this end two instruments were designed and validated: the ‘Death Education Attitudes Scale-Students’ and the ‘Death Education Questionnaire-Students’. The total sample comprised 1897 secondary school students aged 12–19. Participants showed moderately positive attitudes towards death education. Variables such as gender, age and religious beliefs influenced results. Death is not unfamiliar to adolescents; on the contrary, it affects them through the loss of loved ones, and they saw themselves as capable of reflecting on it. The study has implications for the training of teachers and families and for the inclusion of the awareness of death in curricula and in educational policies on national and international levels.

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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.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pedagogy, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Calle Francisco Tomás Y Valiente, 3 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Agustín de la Herrán Gascón & Pablo Rodríguez Herrero

  2. Department of Sociology and Social Work, Universidad de Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain

    José Javier Callejo González & Ricardo Jiménez Aboitiz

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  1. Agustín de la Herrán Gascón
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  2. Pablo Rodríguez Herrero
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  3. José Javier Callejo González
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  4. Ricardo Jiménez Aboitiz
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Correspondence to Pablo Rodríguez Herrero.

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de la Herrán Gascón, A., Herrero, P.R., González, J.J.C. et al. Do adolescents want death to be included in their education?. Soc Psychol Educ 24, 857–876 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-021-09635-w

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