Does Equine Interaction Facilitate Emotional Safety and Learning for College Students within an Agricultural-Based Classroom?

Abstract

Effective teaching requires an educational environment that promotes learning, and yet, developing such an environment can be challenging within today’s agricultural-based classroom for educators due to the trend to a more virtual teaching format and less hands-on learning. Animal interaction, particularly equine activities, has been shown to assist educators in the development of an emotionally safe environment for promoting learning. However, research is lacking as to whether the interaction with the animal needs to be direct or indirect within the collegiate educational environment to observe benefits. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the impact of equine interaction, both direct and indirect, within an educational environment on the emotional safety and learning for the college student within the agricultural-based classroom. Three course types were observed within the agricultural-based educational environment that included courses with no equine interaction (Group A) and courses with equine interaction, both direct (Group B) and indirect (Group C) interaction with the horse. Indirect interaction included items such as observation of equine handling via a video or gaining knowledge from reading online materials, but not engaging in direct, hands-on activities with the horse. Development of emotional safety within the students enrolled within these courses was measured using a self-reporting emotional safety evaluation. Due to the structure of the scale, a decrease in emotional safety indicated a positive change. Learning, both development of semantic and procedural memory, was measured using a student-completed knowledge examination and an instructor-completed skill evaluation, respectively. While significant improvement in emotional safety was not observed within any of the course types, a weak negative correlation was found between emotional safety and semantic memory for students enrolled in equine courses, both direct (R = −0.55, R2 = 0.28) and indirect (R = −0.25, R2 = 0.06) interaction, finding as emotional safety scores lowered to the ideal range that knowledge improved. In addition, students within equine courses showed semantic memory development in specific areas of equine sciences (Group B: Grooming/Tacking, p = 0.03; Group C: Equine Behavior, p = 0.04) and direct equine interaction resulted in development of equine-based procedural memory in all four skill areas measured within the study (p = 0.00). As such, learning is promoted through equine interaction, whether direct or indirect interaction, within the agricultural-based classroom, suggesting that both forms of equine interaction can be a valuable educational tool for the instructor within the collegiate setting.

The Effects of a Collegiate Recovery Community Psychotherapy Program Incorporating Equine Interaction during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Young Adults with Substance Abuse Disorder

“…In comparing other collegiate-based equine interactive activities, Evans et al [66] evaluated self-esteem, one of the categories of emotional safety, within college students and reported that students improved their self-esteem by the end of a semester-long equine course centered around the therapeutic nature of equine interaction. Further, it is important to note that while the risk of working with horses may be a deterrent for colleges wanting to implement a CRC-PIE program for the general student population, both the current study and previous studies focusing on college-age adults engaging in equine interaction activities [49,66] did not encounter any incidences of participant injuries, either for humans or horses. As such, this lack of injury during equine activities may suggest the achievement of creating an emotionally safe environment for promoting learning, specifically as it relates to skill development associated with safe equine handling practices.…”

“…Using this scoring system, a final score that reflected a healthy emotional safety would be a score of 60, with each category reflecting an ideal score when a score of 15 was reached. Reliability associated with the assessment of emotional safety within the young adult population for the survey instrument utilized for this study was reported by Holtcamp et al [49].…”