Digital death education to promote pre-service teachers’ grief literacy regarding childhood bereavement: A qualitative case study

In recent decades, there has been increased advocacy for death education as well as grief literacy. Simultaneously, digital learning has been extensively integrated into higher education, particularly post-COVID-19. The study’s aim was to explore the use of digitally-delivered death education training, related to childhood bereavement, to gain insight into participants’ learning outcomes and the contribution of the digital platform. Employing a qualitative approach, data collection included open-ended reflections, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews with 32 pre-service teachers (PSTs), all of which were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. Findings revealed three themes (values, knowledge, skills), each of which was divided into two categories (self-oriented, other-oriented), and nine subthemes denoting PSTs’ learning outcomes. The analysis also indicated four aspects of the digital platform that facilitated these learning outcomes. The study provides theoretical insights alongside practical implications of using digitally-delivered death education to teach wide-scale best practices to support grieving children.