Animal assisted intervention and social-emotional learning

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Bertholet, Brianna

• The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of Animal Assisted Intervention (AAI) with a group of elementary students while learning five social-emotional skills. This research looked specifically at student attendance, overall engagement and learning retention during the social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons. I designed a program called PAWsitive Assisted Learning (PAL) which uses AAI to support students while they are learning SEL skills. These social-emotional lessons included: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, social awareness, and relationship building. The AAI involved my certified wellness dog, Pongo. The study was conducted over seven weeks and included seven participants in my grade five class. The research demonstrated that Pongo and AAI had a positive impact on both the learning environment and learning retention but no direct influence on student attendance.

• Date created

  2022

• Subjects / Keywords

  • animal assisted intervention
  • animal assisted wellness
  • animal assisted therapy
  • wellness
  • social-emotional learning
  • social-emotional skills

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-6sqx-f317

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International