@misc{10481/97317,
year = {2023},
month = {6},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/97317},
abstract = {Purpose – Covid-19 pandemic, war, climate emergency and other recent challenges are inflicting
tremendous stress to youth. However, death and tragedy are nowadays considered taboo, as there
is generally no standardized nor naturalized discussion on the subject, especially with young
people. The current multi-crisis scenario is intensifying the need to incorporate an education on
tragedy and resilience in our learning systems. In this context, it is necessary to find suitable
teaching resources for this educational challenge that are attractive, entertaining and suitable for
children and youth. A resource that meets all these requirements are children’s folk songs (CFSs).
Apart from the intrinsic educational potential of music, folk songs have a simplicity and musicality
that make them an ideal teaching resource. Considering their oral historical transmission, their
survival confirms the attraction that this type of composition causes on children. However, to
consider CFSs as an adequate resource to carry out an education for death and tragedy, it is
necessary to study whether they present a non-negligible proportion of tragic passages and with
enough variety of themes. This paper aims to address the study of the presence of explicit tragic
content in Spanish CFSs and thus could be considered a cultural resource with transformative
educational potential to develop resilience capabilities on the face of tragedy.
Design/methodology/approach – An analysis of lyrics of 2,558 Spanish CFSs is presented, using a
manual content analysis as well as a computerized content analysis with the aim of identifying the tragic
component of these songs and, thereby, assessing their pedagogical potential as a transformative
educational resource.
Findings – The results obtained show a considerable presence of death and tragedy (19.78%) and a
variety of tragedy dimensions. CFSs have been transmitted orally not only as a ludic resource, but also to
prepare children for life (and death). The results show the complementarity of both analyses to avoid
subjectivity while considering the underlying meanings of the songs.
Originality/value – This task had previously not been approached in an automated manner in the
literature, nor there had been a similar study with a sample of this magnitude. The outcomes obtained
show the considerable presence of tragedy in Spanish CFSs and emphasize the interest of this currently
undervalued didactic resource.},
organization = {Department of Software Engineering (Dpto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Inform aticos), University of Granada.},
publisher = {Emerald},
keywords = {Death education},
keywords = {Tragic content},
keywords = {Death taboo},
title = {Exploring folk songs to educate for resilience},
doi = {10.1108/OTH-10-2022-0064},
author = {Albacete Maza, Juan and Fernández Cano, Antonio and Callejas Carrión, Zoraida},
}