Nature-Oriented Activities In Kindergarten: Literature Review Of The Effects Of Children-Animal Interaction

Abstract

Children nowadays tend to spend most of their time in a structured indoor environment. Nature kindergartens wish to reverse this tendency by allowing and stimulating the children to freely interact with nature. As part of their agenda, some mature kindergartens have introduced human-animal interaction activities into the curriculum. Teachers in kindergarten with child-animal interactions portray them as beneficial for the child at emotional and social levels. , The current literature review on this subject searched for such the empirical evidence of the beneficial effects of children-animal interaction in kindergartens. Promising empirical evidence on the benefits for children in interacting with animals was found, including stress reduction, and better social and emotional development for the child. However, more research has to be done on this field to fully understand the impact of interaction of animals with children, because teachers in kindergartens as well as education policy makers often hesitate to introduce to kindergarten' curriculum activities that may imply risks to the children, such as child-animal interaction.

Keywords: Kindergartenchildren-animal interactionnature kindergartenschildren development

Introduction

Educators, parents and education scholars tend to agree that the kindergarten education has tremendously changed in the few decades, shifting from emphasis of playing outdoors and experience nature to playing in an indoor environment, which might diminish the instances of giving children the chance to learn about nature and engage in unstructured play (Skår & Krogh, 2009; Singer, Singer, D'Agnostino & DeLong, 2009). It is agreed that these changes may jeopardize the child's social and emotional development, due to the fact that playing is considered to be essential for developing cognitive, emotional and social abilities, as well as for growing up to be a well-balanced happy adult (Wenner, 2009). Also, playing indoors and not being exposed to the richness and beauty of nature might prevent the children from expressing themselves in a creative way and using their imagination (Tullis, 2011). Also, this might have a negative effect on their long-term prospects for success in school. Additionally, playing in nature is beneficial for the child's health, so an emphasis on playing indoors may harm the children’s health (Miller & Almon, 2009).

The nature kindergarten education movement that has started in the Scandinavian countries and has now extended to several European and English speaking countries, is seeking to promote the children to experience nature at first hand (Moser & Martinsen, 2010). Among other assumptions of the positive effects of the nature movement, close encounters of children with pets and other domestic animals is considered to bring benefits to the children’s emotional, social and cognitive development (O'Brien, 2009). Such human-nature encounters are usually provided in nature kindergarten in which children can freely interact with animals, take care of them and learn about them as part of knowing what treatment the animals need (Raz, 2014). Children-animal interaction has received numerous praises in literature as allowing children to learn about their needs and the needs of other people, contributing greatly to children's social-emotional development and serve as a source of emotional support for the child (Melson, 2003). Further, interaction with animals is also recommended by the National Research Council (NRC) in USA, i.e.: “Students should be engaged in observing and caring for a wide range of organisms that can be housed in the classroom, with an emphasis on local plants and animals. . . . Students should assist in feeding and rearing animals to understand their needs, their behavior, and their life histories” (Hachey & Butler, 2012).

However, when it comes to the decision of including human-animal interaction in the curricula of kindergartens, the knowledge on the benefits of children-animal interactions are sometimes anecdotal and are mostly based on the experience of teacher. Several authors in the field of human-animal interaction point toward the fact that a more intensive appraisal on the inclusion of animal-assisted activities in early stages of the childhood (i.e. formal education) is needed, as child-animal interaction is very common in the context of companion animal ownership: 70% of households in the US and Western Europe with children own a pet (Melson, 2003), and in Israel – 32% of all households own a pet, with parents usually buying a pet "for the children" (Paz, Almog & Rudin, 2008). Also, in the last decades, there has been a significant increase in the level of using animals in therapy, education and care (Beetz et al., 2012), including the nature kindergartens (Raz, 2014).

The article aims to fill in a gap in research by critically reviewing several studies on the impact of children-animal encounters for children, in order to evaluate the evidence and the methods of assessment of the socio-emotional benefits of encounters with animals in kindergarten children.

Problem Statement

Teachers in nature kindergartens allowing child-animal interactions are very useful for children and they benefit from it (Melson, 2003). Nature-oriented schooling involving child-animal interaction is not very common in Israel (Sagy & Tal, 2015). One reason for the low level of introduction of children-animal interactions to kindergartens may be a sign of conservatism in many educational systems and/or might be related to the fear of the risks associated with the interactions with animals (e.g. zoonotic risks, aggression, unpredictable behaviour of the animals, etc. (Beate, Sandseter, Little & Wyver , 2012).

Evidence-based information on the benefits of child-animal interaction, as well as on the zoonotic and behaviour management, is needed to persuade educators to introduce child-animal interactions to kindergartens' curriculum.

Research Questions

Is there empirical evidence for the benefits of children-animal interaction for children in kindergarten (i.e. typically developed children)?

Purpose of the Study

This article aims to review the literature on the benefits of interactions with animals in kindergarten children, in order to provide empirical (rather the anecdotal) evidence on the benefits of this type of interactions in early stages of formal education. We assume that such evidence might convince more kindergarten' teachers to introduce this type of children-animal interaction into their curriculum.

Research Methods

The literature review is based on articles published in English language, with full text access, that were found in "Google Scholar" using the key words "preschool Children-animal interactions" (note: it was assumed that Google Scholar is the most accessible data base to kindergarten educators) As this literature review is aimed to reveal only empirical evidence on the research subject, any articles that did not report evidence-based results were eliminated from the review. As Melson (2003) claims that the literature on this subject is scarce, empirical studies on the subject published from 2000 to 2016 were included in the review.

Investigation of the query results show that there are relatively many articles dealing with human-animal interaction (Figure 1 ). However, only a few articles were found to specifically focus on children-animal interactions in kindergartens and many of them were not empirical studies. Hence, as can be seen in the flow chart, a total of 9 articles were included in the literature review, with two main subjects: the socio-emotional benefits of interaction with animals for children and the neurophysiological support for the benefits of children animal interactions

See Full Size >

Findings

In the nine studies on children-animal interaction included in the systematic review, two main categories of benefits (and support for these benefits) were observed: the socio-emotional impact of these interactions on children and their impact on the children on neurophysiological level. Both these issues are discussed below.

Conclusion

The aim of the current study was to identify the empirical evidence for the benefits of preschool children-animal interaction, assuming that if such benefits were revealed, more kindergartens would integrate this subject into their curriculum, in the direction of providing socio-emotional and neuro-physiological benefiting to the children. The study has used a literature review approach, based on articles published in English (2000-2016) that were found in "Google Scholar" by using the key words "preschool children-animal interactions".

The first conclusion of the study is that there are promising results supporting the inclusion of children-animals activities in the early stages of educational settings (formal and informal settings). It seems that better achievements in the proving the impact of child-animal interaction has been made in the neurological studies, which came out with sound evidence that stroking an animal calms the children and offers them social support (Beetz et al., 2012). A potential path of the positive impact has been also described: an increase in the production of the hormone Oxytocin is associated with an increase in the friendliness of the children and higher level of positive social communication (Odendaal, 2000).

As for the social and emotional benefits of interaction with animals for children, the studies on this review generally suggest that there is a positive impact of the HAI on the emotional and social development of children (Endenburg & van Lith, 2011), learning (Hachey & Butler, 2012) and motoric skills (Piek et al., 2013). They also suggest that the positive effect of interaction with animals exists both for healthy and for children with disabilities (Heimlich, 2001).

The second conclusion of this study is that more research is needed to fully understand the positive impact of child-animal interaction on several socio-emotional aspects.

If benefits of child-animal interactions do exist as suggested by the reviewed literature, than the lack of child-animal interaction in the pre schooling system may deny the children of these benefits. The empirical prove of the benefits has the potential to encourage teachers and personnel in the education systems to introduce children-animal and children-nature themes into the curriculum (Beate, Sandseter, Little & Wyver, 2012).

Existing knowledge indicates that there is a positive impact on children when interacting with animals. There is a gap in the empirical knowledge on this subject, which should be closed, in the expectation that empirical evidence will complement the encouraging results of the studies done so far, which will gather sufficient evidence of the positive effect Of interaction between children and animals on children.

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