Schooling in a mainstream environment for sick and dying children and adolescents: teachers' representations, experiences and practices

Objective: In the collective imagination, a child who is ill or in a palliative situation does not continue to go to school, nevertheless the child may express the wish to continue his or her schooling in an ordinary environment. The regional pediatric palliative care resource teams (ERRSPP) then offer to support the child's schooling project. However, there is little literature on this subject. The aim of this qualitative study is (1) to explore the representations, experiences and practices of primary and secondary school teachers regarding the accompaniment of sick and end-of-life pupils at school a priori and a posteriori and (2) to provide leads for adjusting the accompaniment of teachers faced with these situations.

Method: 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted by a clinical psychologist: 9 with teachers who had been confronted in the past with the situation of a student who was ill, in a palliative situation and attending school, 18 with teachers who had not. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in order to carry out a thematic analysis.

Results:

The analysis reveals seven major themes among confronted teachers: description of the situation, difficulties, resources, needs, recommendations, perception and description of their role, and making sense of it; and five major themes among non-confronted teachers: evocation of other situations, imagined difficulties and questions, imagined resources and needs, and finally the place of the subjects of bereavement and death at school. To meet our objectives, it is the themes of difficulties and resources for each group that will be presented, as well as certain sub-categories of the themes of making sense (confronted) and representations (non-confronted).

Conclusion: this study should provide a better understanding of how teachers have experienced or represent themselves in terms of accompanying serious illness and the end of life in the school environment. It could provide elements to guide information, awareness-raising and training initiatives for those involved in the world of education and school medicine, but also for external players such as ERRSPPs.

Conclusion: This study should provide a better understanding of how teachers have experienced or represent support for serious illness and the end of life in the school environment