Bereaved students’ and teacher-counsellors’ perceptions of an appropriate school environment for bereavement recovery in secondary schools in Mumias district, Kenya

Abstract

Bereavement is a state of loss of a loved one through death. It triggers a reaction called grief which has negative physical, social and emotional effects on the bereaved child. Bereaved students need an appropriate school environment for bereavement recovery to help them to deal with the negative effects of grief because the surviving parent and the significant others who are supposed to help them at home may be pre-occupied with their own grieving. The bereaved students also need to continue with their schooling away from the home environment yet the grieving process may take a long time. The purpose of this study was to establish the bereaved students‟ and teacher-counsellors‟ perceptions of the appropriate school environment for bereavement recovery among secondary school students. A descriptive survey research design was employed in this study. The target population was 17200 secondary school students out of which an accessible population of 634 students who had lost one or both parents through death was selected for the study. Also, 49 teacher-counsellors were targeted out of which a sample of 23 participated in the study. A sample size of 170 students who had lost one or both parents through death participated in the study. Purposive sampling was used to identify students who had lost one or both parents through death. The data was collected using questionnaires. The collected data was analyzed by both descriptive and inferential statistics with the help of a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 for windows. The descriptive statistics included means, frequencies, percentages and standard deviations whereas inferential statistics involved a t-test. All tests were done at a significant level of α = 0.05. The findings of the research indicated that both bereaved students and teacher-counsellors positively perceived the school as an appropriate environment for bereavement recovery among secondary school students. However, the female students had a more positive perception of the bereavement recovery environment than the male students. It was recommended that teacher and peer counsellors be trained to effectively help bereaved students to overcome grief. The findings of the research are expected to benefit the Ministry of Education, parents and teacher-counsellors to help bereaved secondary school students to effectively work through grief and adjust well in the absence of the deceased parent or parents.