Mental Hygienic Aspects of Animal Assisted Education

• Authors: István Takács , Katalin Szalai
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Institution for Special Education at the Faculty of Pedagogic of the University of Kaposvár has been engaged in animal assisted activities for about three years. Our most recent research program was conducted for over two month in the Spring of 2014 with the involvement of 66 children - all kindergarten and elementary school age -, 11 special educators, physicians, psychologists, special educators, teachers, ethologists. The primary focus of our research was the development (and examination) of memory however observations with ethological and mental hygiene angles were a natural segment of our work. A significant part of the observations pointed to factors that both the children and their educators have experienced: the acceptance of each-other, an increased level of tolerance, an increased attention level towards the partner (human and animal). The teachers gave account of their respective observations in a small conference at the end of the last school year. Researches were offered a glimpse into the unique world of the relationship between a part of “living nature” - the pygmy rabbit in our case - and humans. During the 12 sessions of the training our colleagues have made observations that could serve as basis for a new system of paradigms of animal assisted pedagogics in the future. Our experience can also be re-considered with aspects of remedial pedagogics: we are convinced that animal assistance can become an accentuated part of the care of children and students with impairments. This is also implied by the fact that preparatory works for the continuation of this research at a kindergarten and at a school are already in progress.

Keywords

EN

education with animals; animal assisted education; children education; educational research; mental hygiene

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Practice and Theory in Systems of Education
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 150-156

Dates

published

2015-05-01

received

2014-12-29

accepted

2015-04-21

online

2015-07-29

Contributors

author

István Takács

• University of Kaposvár, Kaposvár, Hungary

author

Katalin Szalai

• University of Kaposvár, Kaposvár, Hungary

References

• Achenbach, T. M. (1991). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist 4/18 and 1991 Profile. Burlington: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry. \
• Fine, Aubrey H. (Ed.) (2010). Handbook on Animal-Assisted Therapy. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
• Kézdi B. (Ed.) (2000). Iskolai mentálhigiéné. Pécs: Pannonia Könyvek.
• Spielberger, C. D., Edwaards, C. D., Montuori, J., & Lushene, R. (1973). State- Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologist Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/ptse-2015-0014