Abstract: By systematically sorting out the CNKI1988—2018 journal literature and taking the extension and change of the research field and research content as the dividing standard, the death education research in China is divided into three stages: starting, comprehensive exploration and in-depth development. That is to say, China's death education research has gone from the development of medical professional response education to universal preventive education to post-disaster psychological disaster education. Over the past three decades, scholars have focused on two basic issues of death education and educational practice, and have reached a basic consensus on the value of death education, the current status of death education in China, and the multi-agent cooperation of death education. At the same time, there are still some shortcomings such as basic theoretical problems, general research perspective, scattered research content, and traditional research methods. In the future, death education research urgently needs to combine the experience of lifelong learning and the integration of “knowledge-prevention-rescue” on the basis of absorbing international experience, relying on China's cultural traditions, and combine multidisciplinary theoretical research and comprehensive practice exploration. Efforts will be made to explore practical implementation strategies for death education, and build a death education system and research system with Chinese characteristics to enhance the pertinence and effectiveness of death education.

Key words: death education, research history, development trend