Science and Religion in Death-Related Teacher Practice
Abstract
To better understand how teachers navigate secularized educational landscapes when dealing with a topic that extend beyond the epistemological realm of science, this study examined US schoolteachers’ practices when dealing with instructional activities on the topic of death and dying. As part of a contextualized research method, classroom cases were used to elicit teachers’ death-related practices. Participating teachers were asked to comment on four pedagogical scenarios: a cemetery fieldtrip, a visit to a museum featuring an Egyptian exhibit with mummies followed by a discussion about embalming, an ecological project involving data collection and analysis of animal roadkill, and a lobster cookout lesson wherein a lobster is cooked alive. Rather than approaching these death activities in the same manner, teacher practice was highly nuanced, with considerable variation depending on the deceased’s identity (whether human or not) and death’s recency (how recent the dying took place). Teachers resorted to avoidance when dealing with the lobster cookout and the cemetery fieldtrip. Reflective of prevalent social representations of science and religion as separate and battling endeavors, teacher avoidance enforced epistemological singularity through preclusion of student exposure to non-scientific ways of knowing death. In contrast, teachers favored neutrality and experiential vicariousness (indirectness) when managing the discussion about mummies and the roadkill investigation. Consistent with social representations of science and religion as dialogic and interacting enterprises, these latter practices showed potential for creating holistic educational spaces for student exposure to epistemically diverse ways of knowing death beyond science. Implications for the pedagogical promotion of youth flourishing and prevention of death anxiety and fear in secularized educational contexts are considered.
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