The Influence of Cultural Snapshots on Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes Towards Death Education

Abstract

Cultural snapshots may be a didactic resource that promotes the understanding of death and provides teachers with tools that can be used to work with students. This study aims to analyse pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards death education. A quantitative longitudinal panel design with pre-test and post-test measures was applied, with descriptive, inferential, and predictive approaches. The sample consisted of 161 pre-service primary teachers from a Spanish university who responded to the validated questionnaire “Death Education Attitudes Scale-Teachers” (DEAS-T). The results reveal an improvement in their attitudes towards death education after implementing cultural snapshots in class, producing significant differences between the pre-test and post-test according to gender, in favour of the male participants. The variables of death anxiety and adequate training are relevant for predicting the attitudes of both genders, in addition to the motivation variable in male participants and the variable of interest towards the topic in female participants.