Browsing by Author "Mattila, Eija"

The purpose of this research is to get knowledge of what has been written in the electronic media about dog-assisted education. All the articles, which has been used in this research are available for anyone. There has been a lot of research about dog-assisted education in the eyes of teachers and students, but no one has done research of the written media. Media is an important way to get knowledge about things in this global world. It is even more important in this time, when everything is in Internet and almoust everyone has access to see it. The way media handles dog-assisted education is even more important, because the interest of the work has been increased. Media also creates and changes how people see the world and media is an importand way to get information all the things around us. The data has been collected using mainly Google, but some of the articles are from the sites, which are making the news for the people. Those sites are for example Yle, Helsingin Sanomat, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat and Turun Sanomat. The data has been collected using terms like schooldog, dog-assisted pedagogy, dog-assisted, dog-assisted intervention, animal-assisted and animal-assisted intervention. 20 articles includes in the research of dog-assisted education in the media. After having all the material, the themes of the articles were collected and categorized. The research came out with 4 main categories and some subcategories. The main categories were dogs in the part of schoolinstitution, dog’s tasks and influencess, the views of the persons which includes the schoolsystems and research based information and future directions. The three main categories has four subcategories and only one has less categories. In the category of dogs in the part of schoolinstitution includes how to bring dog in the schoolinstitution, education for the dog-assisted pedagogy, dog’s suitability for the work and safety. Dog’s tasks and influencess includes dog’s tasks and dog’s influencess, dog’s wellbeing and dog’s ”experiences”. In the third category, the views of the persons which includes the schoolsystems, has subcategories called teacher’s, student’s, parents’ and other staff’s views of dog-assisted education. In the last category, the subcategories were research of dog-assisted pegagogy, future directions and critical view of dog-assisted education. 20 articles came out with diverse views and experiences of dog-assisted education in the practice. In the articles it can bee seen, who has educated in the area and who hasn’t. In the future, when the interest of dog-assisted education arouse, it should bee important to raise those who has education and experiense for the work. That way, it is possible to arouse right knowledge of dog-assisted education, professional qualification and guard future work in the schools.