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This study explored children’s perceptions of a canine-assisted social-emotional learning program developed within the framework of a canine therapy program at a mid-sized Canadian university. Data...

Educators and parents alike have high expectations that adolescents behave prosocially and, within the context of schools, this is evident in curriculum grounded in social and emotional learning and in kindness-themed school-wide initiatives. Despite this emphasis on kindness, relatively little is empirically known about how adolescents enact kindness. To understand just how adolescents demonstrate kindness, a study of 191 ninth graders was conducted in which students were asked to plan and complete five kind acts. In addition to planning and doing acts of kindness, participants were asked to rate their face-to-face and online kindness, report the number of kind acts they completed, identify the recipients of their acts, and assess the quality of their kind acts. At post-test, participants’ self-ratings of both face-to-face and online kindness were significantly higher than their pre-test ratings. Only one third of participants completed all of their kind acts, most participants chose familiar others as the recipients of their kindness, and the bulk of participants rated their acts of kindness as medium quality on a low–medium–high scale. The kind acts done by participants reflected the themes of helping with chores, being respectful, complimenting/encouraging others, and giving objects or money. Implications for educators and parents are discussed.

Once used mostly in clinical settings such as hospitals and geriatric care centers, canine animal-assisted therapy programs have become increasingly commonplace on university campuses to reduce stress and support students’ social and emotional well-being. Researchers responding to the call for increased empirical rigor in studies assessing the effects of animal-assisted therapy and practitioners seeking to initiate well-being programs on campus can face challenges in accessing therapy dogs and their volunteer handlers. This article outlines how therapy canines and their handlers may be holistically assessed for participation in university-based initiatives and presents a model that includes the prescreening of volunteer handlers, training sessions for handlers, the use of multiple raters to assess canine temperament and behavior, the use of mock sessions, and the use of ongoing formative evaluation and feedback for handlers once they are accepted into the program.

Increasingly colleges and universities are offering canine therapy to help students de-stress as a means of supporting students' emotional health and mental well-being. Despite the popularity of such programs, there remains a dearth of research attesting to their benefits.Participants included 1960 students at a mid-size western Canadian University. The study's aims were to assess the stress-reducing effects of a weekly drop-in, canine-therapy program and to identify how long participants spent with therapy canines to reduce their stress.Demographic information was gathered, length of visit documented and a visual analog scale (VAS) was used to assess entry and exit self-reports of stress.Participants' self-reported stress levels were significantly lower after the canine therapy intervention. Participants spent an average of 35 min per session.This study supports the use of drop-in, canine therapy as a means of reducing university students' stress. The findings hold applied significance for both counseling and animal therapy practitioners regarding the dose intervention participants seek to reduce their stress.

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine fourth to eighth graders’ conceptualizations of kindness at school (i.e., their definition of kindness, an example of an act of kindness they have done, who they see as the most salient adult agent of kindness, and which location they deem that kindness happens most). To date, kindness research has focused predominantly on assessing the effects of being kind on student well-being and little is known about how students understand kindness and are kind in school. Across definitions and examples of kindness, the themes of helping others, showing respect, and encouraging others were prevalent. Teachers and principals were identified as the main adult agents of kindness; the classroom and outside/playground were identified as the two main kindness locations. Understanding how students conceptualize kindness within the school context holds implications for educators seeking to foster prosocial behavior among students.

University students with elevated stress levels are at risk for experiencing compromised mental health and for underperforming academically. In an effort to support student wellbeing, post-secondar...

Transitioning from high school to university can prove to be a for midable challenge for many first-year students, with many experiencing home sickness. Given that students who experience homesickness are more likely than their non-homesick cohorts to drop out of university, universities have a vested interest in supporting students during their first-year transition. Programs that provide opportunities for human–animal interactions on campus are gaining popularity as one way of increasing students’ wellbeing. The current study examined the effects of an 8-week animal-assisted therapy (AAT) program on first-year university students’ wellbeing. An initial feasibility study (n = 86) was conducted that provided opportunities for students to interact, in small groups, with trained therapy dogs and their volunteer handlers. Results indicated that this program reduced participants’ levels of homesickness and increased their satisfaction with life. An experimental study was then conducted utilizing a sim...

In this study, we sought to create and validate a brief measure to assess students’ perceptions of kindness in school. Participants included 1,753 students in Grades 4 to 8 attending public schools in a large school district in southern British Columbia. The School Kindness Scale (SKS) demonstrated a unidimensional factor structure and adequate internal consistency. The pattern of associations of the SKS to a corpus of theoretically relevant constructs obtained via student self-reports (classroom supportiveness, optimism, happiness, prosocial and social goals, satisfaction with life, and academic self-efficacy) provided evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. Furthermore, the SKS was significantly and positively associated with teacher reports on students’ empathy, social skills, and peer acceptance. Analyses by gender and grade indicated that girls perceived significantly higher levels of kindness in school than did boys, and that students’ perceptions of kindness in school decreased from fourth to eighth grade, with fourth-grade students reporting the highest levels of kindness in school and eighth-grade students reporting the lowest levels. The theoretical importance of investigating students’ perceptions of kindness in the school context and the practical implications of this research for informing educational efforts to promote social and emotional competencies in school communities are discussed. C � 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper proposes a mutually beneficial model of collaboration between veterinarians and canine therapy programs. Veterinarians and the clinics for whom they work routinely establish collaborations with multiple and varied stakeholders. This might include a laboratory for processing samples and the corresponding courier company needed to deliver samples to the lab or a partnership with a local dog rescue organization for whom discounted rates are offered. One community partnership that stands to benefit both the clinic and the community agency, is for veterinarians to work in tandem with a local canine-assisted therapy program. The benefits to such an alliance are multifold and address aspects of veterinary medicine including client recruitment, community education, and access to a network of devoted dog enthusiasts.

This study examined how students in kindergarten through third grade conceptualized kindness in school. Participants were asked to draw two pictures: one of themselves doing something kind at school, and one of a teacher doing something kind. Students’ drawings of their kindness reflected themes of maintaining friendships, physically helping others, and showing respect. Students’ drawings of teacher kindness revealed that students saw teaching itself as an act of kindness and that teachers showed kindness through physically helping others. Across drawings, no gender differences were found; however, differences in the themes emphasized by grade were identified.