Courageous conversations: The possibilities and practicalities of discussing death when teaching gerontology.

Abstract

When developing curricula in gerontology related to families and health, we often relegate death and dying, end-of-life care, and bereavement to the last topic of the course. However, what if we were to restructure our classes to consider death and dying first? This paper explores pedagogical and practice-based strategies for integrating death education into gerontology curricula from the outset. Guided by the Compassionate Communities approach to palliative care (Kellehear, 2005), which emphasizes that experiences of death, dying, and bereavement extend beyond professional domains, we argue that gerontology educators are uniquely poised to support public engagement with mortality. Engaging with these topics early in the curriculum encourages reflection on death, finitude, and grief, benefiting both students and instructors. We ask: how can this be done effectively? As educators, we too need to learn how to engage with this topic meaningfully and become comfortable with discomfort. Drawing from our own teaching experiences, we highlight how tools, such as the arts and Death Cafés can provoke critical insights on how grief and death inform the life course. An online appendix of resources is provided to support instructors in teaching students about death and exploring their own relationship to mortality as part of this process.