The Research On The Effectiveness Of The Life And Death Education Among Elementary School Students In Guangzhou

1 BACKGROUNDThe childhood is an important stage of physical and mental development,with the drastic changes of people’s living environment,the child was exposed to heavy physical and mental pressure.If the society and the family do not pay attention to children’s life cognition,the children are mostly likely to misinterpret the meaning of life,so the current education is necessary to help the child recognize the uniqueness of life and irreversibility of death.In early 20th century,developed country such as the United States,Europe and Japan began to popularize the life and death education for all stage of primary,secondary and tertiary education.China’s Hong Kong and Taiwan also introduced the life education in 1990s.So far,the life education in these country and regions develop well.In recent years,although the Chinese mainland gradually pay attention to the life education,it started relatively late,and most researches on life education mainly focus on college students,medical staff,most of researches on children’s life education is the investigative research of life attitude or exploration curriculum of life education,and there is still lack of research on the effectiveness of the life and death education on primary school.2 OBJECTIVEBase on the investigation of the death concept,the death attitudes and the quality of life of primary school students in Guangzhou,this study aims to establish a life and death education curriculum and apply it to students and evaluate the effectiveness of the life and death education on pupils’ death concept,death attitudes and the quality of life,in order to provide evidence for promotion of pupil’s life and death education.3 METHODS3.1 The investigation of death concept,death attitudes and quality of life among primary school students in Guangzhou.Adopting convenient cluster s sampling method,a total of 960 pupils from grade 3 to 6 in Guangzhou were assessed with the death concept scale,the death attitude scale,the quality of life scale for children and adolescents and the self-designed general information questionnaire.Descriptive statistics,Pearson correlation and a structural equation model were used to describe the indicators.3.2 The construction of life and death education curriculum.Based on the current finding and literature review,8 books of life and death issue were selected and recorded into videos,and used them to set up the life and death education website.Then the life and death education curriculum was evaluated by a total of 4 the hospice care and pedagogy field expert and primary school teacher.3.3 The investigation of the parents’ attitudes towards the life education of primary school.Adopting a convenient sampling method and the self-designed questionnaire to investigate the attitudes of parents of the intervention group students.Descriptive statistics was used to describe the indicators.3.4 The empirical study of apply the life and death education among the primary school students.A quasi-experimental design was performed in elementary students in Guangzhou,and selected 74 students as the intervention group participate in 40 minutes per lesson,a total of 8 phase of life and death education curriculum(the course site:http://portal.smu.edu.cn/smjyp/),and other 84 students was selected as the blank control group.Used the quantitative and qualitative research indexes to evaluate the effectiveness of life and death education.4 RESULTS4.1 The investigation of the primary school students’ death concept,death attitude and quality of life.The mean score of death concept was(13.24±2.78)and at a high level,which each dimension mean scores range from high to low is irreversibility(4.54±1.11),universality(4.37±1.38)and nonfunctionality(4.33±1.20).The mean score of death attitude was(75.28±12.21),and quality of life was(144.85±8.60)and all at middle level.The path analysis showed that the death conception had significantly positive correlation with death attitude(SE=0.82,P<0.05)and had no significantly correlation with quality of life(SE=0.487,P>0.05),death attitude had significantly positive correlation with quality of life(SE=0.021,P<0.05),the effect of death conception on quality of life was totally mediated by death attitude(95%CI was[0.003,0.057]).4.2 The construction of life and death education website.The life and death education curriculum included three topics of ’plant life process’,’animal life process’ and ’human life process’ and some teaching activities.The lowest scores of four experts valued the teaching goal of life and death education was 4.25 and the score of the total content was 4.5,and the highest score of potential negative impact was 0.36 and the lowest was 0.4.3 The investigation of the parents’ attitudes towards the life education of primary school.The mean score of need for life education was(63.34±8.22),and the mean score of the parents support for life education was(44.36±6.63).4.4 The empirical study of the life and death education in primary school students.Before the intervention,the scores of interpersonal relationship,self-concept,negative emotions,self-satisfaction,death concept and death attitude was no statistical difference between the two group.After the intervention,there was no statistically significant in interpersonal relationship,self-concept and self-satisfaction(P>0.05),the influence of life education on negative emotions was statistically significant(F=8.470,P=0.004)and the influence on the death attitudes at 1 week and 1 mouth after intervention was statistically significant(P=0.001,P=0.004),there was no statistical differences on the death attitudes at 6 mouth after intervention(P=0.397).In the intervention group,the influence of time on death concept was no statistically significant,but the score of death concept at 1 mouth after intervention(14.09±2.25)was significant higher than that before intervention(13.31±3.33).The influence of time on death attitude had a statistically significant,the score of death attitude at 1 week(79.01±10.74)and 1 mouth(79.95±12.03)after intervention higher than that before intervention(74.93±15.11).According to the interview data of 10 students in the intervention group,three themes of the effectiveness of life and death education were summarized:1.The life and death education can inspire students to cherish life;2.The attitude towards death is relatively calm;3.Life and death education needs to go further.5 CONCLUSIONS5.1 The elementary students have a good cognition of death conception,but their death attitude and quality of life are at middle level.Increasing students’ awareness of the concept of death can promote the positive changes of death attitudes and thus making a positive impact on the quality of life.5.2 The life and death education in this study is effective in reducing negative emotions and improving death attitude in a short-term,and the life and death education can also catalyze the maturity of the death concept.In addition,in the whole process of this study,all participants had no adverse reactions associated with life education.The experts and students hold a positive attitude toward the life and death education and the majority of the students’ parent also expressed support to carry out the life education in primary school.5.3 The established life education course which can be the blueprint for teachers to use the website media and curriculum to carry out the primary school life education,and it also can be used for parents to guide the students’ self-study.