Animal-Assisted Interventions in the Classroom—A Systematic Review

Abstract

The inclusion of animals in educational practice is becoming increasingly popular, but it is unclear how solid the evidence for this type of intervention is. The aim of this systematic review is to scrutinise the empirical research literature relating to animal-assisted interventions conducted in educational settings. The review included 25 papers; 21 from peer-reviewed journals and 4 obtained using grey literature databases. Most studies reported significant benefits of animal-assisted interventions in the school setting. Despite this, studies vary greatly in methods and design, in intervention types, measures, and sample sizes, and in the length of time exposed to an animal. Furthermore, a worrying lack of reference to risk assessment and animal welfare must be highlighted. Taken together, the results of this review show promising findings and emerging evidence suggestive of potential benefits related to animals in school settings. The review also indicates the need for a larger and more robust evidence base driven by thorough and strict protocols. The review further emphasises the need for safeguarding for all involved—welfare and safety are paramount.

Animal-assisted Therapy for the Emotional Well-being of Children with Intellectual Disabilities and Behavioral Disorders

“…In a recent systematic review, the authors refer to variability in sample size and duration of time exposed to an animal [17]; with interventions ranging from 4 to 24 weeks of duration, with three minutes of direct interaction until the dog is present all day in the classroom. Our intervention period was 12 weeks and the sessions with the dog were an hour in duration because it was considered the best option for the dog's welfare.…”

“…The inclusion of animals in educational practice is increasingly popular [17]. The focus of the research in many of the reviewed studies was largely socio-emotional, including the effect of animals on mood, emotional regulation, social behaviors and general behavior in the classroom; as well as adherence to and follow-up of instructions issued by teachers [27,37] The happiness and relaxation variables that best reflect the emotional well-being of the participants, obtained a progressive improvement, achieving maximum scores in the last session in more than 50% of the participants.…”

“…Dogs play an important role in AAT [16], in a review of 25 articles from empirical studies with children and adolescents in schools, three types of animals were used: Guinea pigs were used in 3 studies, 1 rabbit participated and in the remaining 21 they included a dog [17].…”

Animal-assisted interventions: Possibilities and limitations of implementation in young persons with developmental disabilities and behavioral disorders

“…Studije sprovedene u školskom okruženju izveštavaju o prednostima AAI, ali metodološki pristupi i vremenski rokovi tretmana često variraju i nemaju jasne eksperimentalne okvire, što umnogome otežava donošenje zaključaka i poređenje rezultata (Brelsford, Meints, Gee & Pfeffer, 2017). Sem toga, istraživači su zabeležili da i pored velikog interesovanja i pozitivnog stava nastavnika prema AAI, nastavno osoblje smatra da im je potrebno mnogo više znanja, podrške i sredstava da primene određene intervencije potpomognute životinjama, dok uporedo razmatraju svoja dodatna radna opterećenja, dobrobit životinja i odnos dece prema njima (Rud & Beck, 2003;Ladarola et al, 2015, prema Smith & Dale, 2016.…”

Examining the Effects of Rabbit-Assisted Interventions in the Classroom Environment

“…They can be house-trained, are capable of solving different tasks, and are not afraid of interactions with humans. We chose rabbits for our investigations since there is little related literature on them [38], and because rabbits are easily kept and cheap. Rabbits need no particular training as opposed to dogs, for example.…”