| Animals can encourage children to become more confident and motivated to learn, enhance self-esteem, provide healthful benefits through touch, improve language structure, and help children become more caring toward others (Becker, 2002). Longitudinal studies have shown that children who grow up with animals in their lives become healthier and happier adults (Bryant, 1986). However, less is known about how animals might help children in the classroom. Therefore, a mixed method study was conducted for six weeks, with sixteen two to three-year old children, with interventions lasting approximately one hour a day, at a Windward Oahu preschool setting. The mixed method approaches used were an observational case study and an alternate treatment design (ATD), a form of single subject research methodology. The research question to support this study asked how the presence of a Pet Partner Team (i.e. certified handler and dog) influenced children's active participation, defined as physically taking part in, during a story-telling activity time. This question was considered through comparing observations during storytelling time in two phases, baseline (a & b) and experimental (c & d), involving the: (a) Teacher, (b) Researcher, (c) Pet Partner Team (PPT), and Teacher with Stuffed Animal (TSA).; The findings suggest the PPT was illustrated to be superior by 20.9 percent when compared to the TSA. The PPT exceeded the researcher by 21 percent and teacher baseline by 24.6 percent. During baseline, the mean percent of time children participated during storytelling time was 26.6 percent during sessions with the teacher and 30.2 percent with the researcher. Similar results were obtained when comparing baseline with TSA results, illustrating that the pet partner team is the intervention of choice. |
