Research in Human-Animal Interaction
Ghazi, M.; Huhne, D.; Turner, J.
Fifth International Colloquium on Working Equines. The future for working
equines. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 30 October-2 November, 2006.. 2007.
383-392.
SPANA has had an educational programme, working with Jordanian schools and the Ministry of Education, since 1993, and has supported School Animal Clubs since the 1990s. The overall aims of the education programme are to encourage a sense of responsibility towards animals and the environment; to overcome ignorance and fear of animals; to increase awareness of the importance of the relationship between humans and animals and of the importance of animals as sources of income and livelihood; and hence to improve the level of care for all animals. To develop children's empathy and confidence with animals, it is important for them to have the opportunity to observe, touch and handle animals, under expert supervision. To provide this opportunity more widely for schools, SPANA opened its Educational Animal Centre in Amman in 2003, housing animals such as donkeys, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits and guinea, pigs that had been accustomed to human contact. In 2005, over 5,500 school students from the age of nine years upward visited the Centre, from 200 schools. Donkeys are widely used by Jordanian farmers, but the impression of donkeys is generally rather poor. In order to assess how visits to the Centre influence the students' attitudes to donkeys, 80 visiting student ere asked to complete questionnaires before and after their visits. An additional 23 students who did not visit the Centre also completed the questionnaires. The survey showed that the students' perceptions of donkeys were significantly more positive after the visits than before, in relation to their view of donkeys as likeable, clean eautiful, intelligent, nice to touch or stroke, and enjoying being stroked by people, and that the students believed that their visits had increased their knowledge about donkeys. The non-visiting students generally had less positive perceptions of donkeys. These findings indicate that school visits to the Educational Animal Centre improve students' understanding of donkeys and increase positive attitudes towards these animals.