Annotatedbibliographyexample1.pdf

Topic Area: Grief and Students in Middle School

Introduction

The following set of articles was collected to gain insight into how grief can be addressed, or if it

should be addressed, with students in a middle school setting. Two of the articles report the effects grief

can have on students’ experiences, three discuss the merit of common grief theories, and two describe

grief interventions in school settings. Much has been written about grief and its treatment; this

bibliography is by no means exhaustive.

Annotations

Abdelnoor, A., & Hollins, S. (2004). The effect of childhood bereavement on secondary school

performance. Educational Psychology in Practice, 20(1), 43-54.

This empirical study examined the effects of the death of a parent or sibling on students’ academic

performance, anxiety, and self-esteem. Abdelnoor and Hollins (2004) conducted the study in England.

Their sample included 73 participants who had lost a parent, 24 participants who had lost a sibling, and

a control group that matched the experimental group for age and gender. The groups were not matched

for cognitive ability. This is a limitation of the study. Academic performance was measured using

England’s General Certificate of Secondary Education Examination. Anxiety was measured using the

Spielberger State Trait Anxiety Scale for Children, and self-esteem was measured using the Coopersmith

Self-Esteem Inventory. The results show that parentally-bereaved students and sibling-bereaved female

students underachieve compared to the control groups. Bereaved students also experienced more

anxiety than non-bereaved students. There does not appear to be a relationship between self-esteem

and bereavement. When achievement and anxiety scores were broken down based on the manner of

death (illness, old age, suicide, etc.) no patterns emerged. The results suggest that losing a parent or

sibling can significantly affect students’ performance at school.

Abdelnoor, A. & Hollins, S. (2004). How children cope at school after family bereavement. Educational

and Child Psychology, 21(3), 85-93.

Abdelnoor and Hollins (2004) interviewed 14 young adults who had lost a family member at least four

years previously and before the age of 16. Their aim was to investigate the effects of family

bereavement on students’ school experiences. They recruited volunteers to participate through

advertisements in student newspapers. Each participant was interviewed once about his or her

bereavement experience. Participants identified as Eastern European, South African, and Asian; and 11

were born in the UK. Every bereavement experience was unique, but there were two broad categories

of experiences: those who viewed school as a refuge following the death, and those who found school

more challenging. The group that found school to be a refuge tended to invest more in academic work.

Those who struggled with school reported a lack of empathy from teachers and students at school. The

authors conclude that family bereavement disrupts the educational process and suggest that future

research should investigate whether coping strategies can be taught to bereaved students. This study is

limited in terms of its small sample size limitations of this study include the small sample size and vague

methodology.

Granados, S., Winslade, J., DeWitt, M., & Hedke, L. (2009). Grief counseling groups for adolescents based

on re-membering practices. Journal of School Counseling, 7 (34). Retrieved from

http://www.jsc.montana.edu/articles/v7n34.pdf

This article describes a qualitative study on the implementation of small group grief counseling in two

middle schools and one high school. The authors conducted a total of three groups of 6-7 students per

group. Rather than using the traditional approach based on the stage model of grieving in which

participants are encouraged to say goodbye to their loved one, the intervention focused on

remembering the students’ loved ones. Over the course of six sessions based on narrative therapy,

students rebuilt their relationships with their deceased friend of family member. Sharing their

relationships and experiences with the deceased person in a group setting seemed to strengthen

participants’ ties to their loved one it a positive way. Feedback from participants indicated that the

approach was effective; students reported feeling closer to their lost loved one following group, and

shared stories of increased positive feelings and less sadness. Limitations of the study include a limited

sample size and a lack of numerical data to support the effectiveness of the intervention.

Maciejewski, P.K., Zhang, B., Block, S.D., & Prigerson, H.G. (2007). An empirical examination of the stage

theory of grief. Journal of the American Medical Association. 297(7), 716- 723.

The goal of this study was to test the stage theory of grief outlined by Jacobs (whose work was based on

Bowlby and Kübler-Ross). The stages are numbness-disbelief, separation-distress, depression-mourning,

and recovery. The model hypothesizes that as an individual moves through these stages, acceptance of

the death steadily increases. Participants were recruited using advertisements in newspapers, at

hospitals, and other organizations in Connecticut. The sample included 233 bereaved individuals who

had lost a significant person to natural death. Participants’ experiences with each stage were measured

using items from the Inventory of Complicated Grief-Revised. Data was collected over a three-year

period. It is unclear how many times participants met with researchers, but participants were asked to

answer the items several times, in terms of their experiences one to 24 months following their loss. The

researchers found that participants did tend to move through the stages outlined by Jacobs, but that the

timeline for moving through these stages varied. Counter to the stage model, they found that

acceptance is more common than disbelief in the first six months following the loss. A potential

limitation of the study is that participants were adults who had lost someone to natural causes.

Ross, D. & Hayes, B. (2004). Interventions with groups of bereaved pupils. Educational and Child

Psychology, 21(3), 95-108.

Ross and Hayes (2004) implemented a grief group intervention at one primary and one secondary school

in the UK. They worked with the school psychologists to identify participants and develop the

intervention. At each school, the intervention consisted of a two-day workshop for students led by the

researchers and the school psychologist. The student sample consisted of 14 students, seven at each

school. The workshop included storytelling activities, which allowed students to actualize the loss,

express feelings, continue their relationship with the deceased, and hear about others’ experiences with

death. Other activities encouraged solution-focused and future-oriented thinking. Qualitative data was

collected from all participants, their parents, and their teachers. Quantitative data was collected from

secondary students using The Pupils’ Feelings about School and School-work Inventory. Based on the

http://www.jsc.montana.edu/articles/v7n34.pdf

inventory, the authors concluded that small-group counseling in schools can be helpful in increasing

bereaved students’ interest and enthusiasm in school, and in increasing students’ sense of competence

at school related tasks. The article does not provide detailed qualitative results; it is not clear how

affective the intervention was with primary students. Another limitation of the study is that it may or

may not be generalizable to students in a U.S. school.

Russac, R., Steighner, N., & Canto, A. (2002). Grief work versus continuing bonds: A call for paradigm

integration or replacement? Death Studies, 26(6), 463-478.

Russac, Steighner, and Canto (2002) collected information from 60 grieving individuals to see whether

Freud’s grief work model or continuing bonds theory more accurately describes what bereaved people

actually experience. Their method was quasi-experimental; they used a control group matched to the

experimental group in age, gender, and relationship of the deceased to the survivor. For example, if a

member of the experimental group had lost her brother, a person who had an ongoing relationship with

her living brother was chosen for the control group. Both groups completed a questionnaire that used

Likert scales to measure their relationships and grief. The results support the internalization n of grief as

described by grief work. The results also support continuing bonds’ notion that people maintain

closeness to the deceased across time. These authors, unlike the authors of different grief theories, have

no obvious interest in disproving either grief work or continuing bonds. Their findings suggest a need for

more research to back up theories of grief. One limitation of the study is that all participants are

university students from the same university. The cultural backgrounds of the participants is not

discussed.

Stroebe, M. & Schut, H. (2010). Dual process model of coping with bereavement: a decade on. OMEGA:

Journal of Death and Dying, 61(4), 273-289.

This theoretical article describes the rationale for the development and use of the dual process model of

coping with bereavement. Stroebe and Schut (2010) compare their theory, which was first published in

1999, with others, notably Worden’s task model that emerged in the 1980s. They argue that their model

is applicable to both “typical” and “complicated” grief, unlike the Freud’s grief work or Worden’s task

model. The dual process model divides the grieving process into two types of components: loss oriented

components and restoration oriented components. Bereaved individuals oscillate, they say, between

doing and thinking things that focus on the loss, and doing and thinking things that focus on the changes

and new experiences. This model allows for greater flexibility than do other models. Thus, this model is

potentially applicable to grieving experiences in a wide variety of cultures, and potentially useful in

comparing grief experiences. Stroebe and Schut (2010) acknowledge that without empirical evidence,

theoretical writings on grief are useless. They also acknowledge the challenges of empirically testing

their theory and outline some suggestions for testing their theory. While they do attempt to bridge the

gap between their theory and the implementation of empirical studies, their suggestions are vague.

Conclusion

There are a few key points to take away from this eclectic group of articles. First, the death of a

family member can significantly affect a student’s personal and academic well-being (Abdelnoor &

Hollins, 2004a; Abdelnoor & Hollins, 2004b; Silverman & Nickman, 1996). Second, grief experiences vary

widely, and there is no consensus on which model or theory of grief is most relevant to what bereaved

people actually experience (Maciejewski, Zhang, Block, & Prigerson, 2007; Russac, Steighner, & Canto,

2002; Stroebe & Schut, 1999). Third, not many empirical studies have been published that seek to test

grief theories. This may be because of a lack of instruments for measuring various components of grief

theories. Maciejewski et al. (2002), Stroebe and Schut (1999) discuss the difficulty of measuring the

dimensions of grief theories in a valid and reliable way. Someone would have to invest in developing

tools that measure the experiences described in the theories before the theories themselves could be

tested. Studies that do attempt to test models or theories do not tend to involve children. This may be

because accessing children is more involved than working with adult volunteers. Finally, researchers

who have done grief interventions with children and in schools have taken pieces of grief theory and

counseling theory and merged them to create a seemingly logical intervention (Granados, Winslade,

DeWitt, & Hedke, 2009; Ross & Hayes, 2004). Their successes indicate that trying grief groups in schools

is worthwhile and generally beneficial for students. School counselors, psychologists, and social workers

are likely to be in positions to try grief interventions. Realistically, these support staff who would

coordinate an intervention would not prioritize writing the intervention up for publication. Ideally these

school support staff would partner with grief or educational researchers whose focus is writing for

publication so that others could use and improve upon the intervention, and work towards filling in the

current caps between grief theory, research, and intervention implementation.