Cultivating Kindness sheds light on just how children and adolescents are kind, especially in school. Grounded in psychological and educational research on kindness and supported with illustrations capturing the voices of public school students, this book enhances our understanding of kindness.Written with educators in mind, Cultivating Kindness draws from surveys and interviews with more than three thousand children and adolescents. Author John-Tyler Binfet share...

Informed by research and grounded in critical discussions of theory and practice, Optimizing Therapy Dog-Handler Team Welfare challenges readers to explore the complexities inherent in, and arising from, practices that optimize welfare for therapy dog-handler teams.Each chapter begins with a case study that elucidates the complexities of canine-assisted interventions and invites readers to consider welfare from multiple perspectives. This book positions welfare as a factor...

Mindfulness and Critical Friendship: A New Perspective on Professional Development for Educators assembles an international community of scholar-practitioners from multiple disciplines who utilize different methodologies and ideological perspectives to reflect on and interrogate contexts that situate mindfulness and critical friendship as constructs which support professional development for educators. Mindfulness and critical friendship connect critically and creatively like-minded collea...

Stress can have a deleterious effect on people's mental, physical, and psychological health. There is a growing body of evidence, however, that suggests animals, both as pets and therapy partners, can help mitigate people's stress levels. This book showcases a rich collection of research papers from Human-Animal Interactions. It highlights research pertaining to pets as well as animal-assisted therapy in both school and professional settings. The book also includes a scene-setting introduc...

Interest in the field of human-animal interactions is burgeoning, and researchers and educators are keen to understand the science undergirding research that helps us understand interactions between people and animals. Recently, exciting and innovative research is focusing on how people’s virtual interactions with animals can enhance their learning, social interactions, and well-being. This research aims to answer questions such as, "What types of interactions do people have with animals i...

Covering principles of therapy dog team training, assessment, skills, and ongoing monitoring, Canine-Assisted Interventions provides guidance on the most evidence-based methods for therapy dog team welfare, training, and assessment.The authors offer a linear approach to understanding all aspects of the screening, assessment, and selection of dog-handler teams by exploring the journey of dog therapy teams from assessment of canines and handlers to the importance of ongoing ...