Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
SIRNAK UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF DIVINITY FACULTY, sa.29, ss.274-310, 2022 (ESCI)
The phenomenon of death is one of the issues that most individuals, children, young or adults are curious about. The subject of death sometimes has to be explained or answered by its content in the Religious Culture and Ethic courses with the questions they ask within the framework of the curiosity questions of the students. Students have "challenging" questions about death. In this context, this study was conducted in order to reveal the opinions of the teachers of REC courses about the reasons why the students are curious about death in the RCE courses, the reasons for presenting the subject of death in the lessons, the approaches adopted by the teachers when presenting the subject of death, the teaching methods-techniques, the problems experienced by the teachers in the teaching of the theme of death and how the death education on an appropriate pedagogical basis affects the children. This is the case study pattern in this study, which adopted a qualitative research method, and a semi-structured interview form was used as a data collection tool in this direction. Within the scope of the research, a group of samples was selected for purposes and 21 RCE teachers working in different types of schools in Ankara and Kirikkale provinces and districts participated in the research. The findings were gathered under two themes titled " What Do Teachers Have Difficulty in Explaining the Subject of Death and How Do They Overcome the Difficulty of Explaining the Subject of Death". According to the RCE courses teachers who participated in the research, the subject of death is one of the natural topics of RCE courses. According to teachers, there is a natural relationship between religion and death, and this relationship is also built by the student. It is not an easy situation to present/explain the factual or conceptual relationship in question on a pedagogical basis in the RCE courses of the nature of both concepts. It is quite challenging to be able to explain the subject of death to children in and out of RCE courses. The research findings revealed that RCE teachers had difficulties in terms of "not being fully flexible when presenting the subject of death, not being able to explain it in accordance with the level of the student, not being able to concretize the subject, not being able to give clear answers that children expect and want, not being able to correct the superstitious information obtained from the family or environment, not knowing how to approach children who are in the process of grief, etc. To them, RCE teachers therefore, need to have some competencies to be able to explain the subject of death to children. Some of these competencies and skills are; a) specific content knowledge: Quranic verses and hadiths related to death, b) pedagogy knowledge: teaching methods-techniques appropriate to the level of the students, c) psychology knowledge, communication and empathy skills. It has been revealed that teachers should not use death as a means of intimidation explaining the subject of death in lessons but should emphasize that Allah is very forgiving and they should adopt a soft / constructive attitude when talking on the subject. In this context, it is understood that teachers need inservice training at the point of teaching other "difficult" subjects, especially the subject of death, and that general knowledge, general ability, field competencies and pedagogical knowledge (special teaching methods) training should be provided in the teacher training processes.