Supporting living together: Group work on animal rights for children

Abstract

AbstractWith this group work, which includes activities for animal rights, it is aimed that children can raise awareness about animal rights and interact with animals. The research was carried out as a pretest‐posttest experimental study in order to evaluate the effect of group work on children receiving counselling and training from a Guidance and Research Center in Istanbul. The study group of the research between May 2022 and June 2022 consists of 20 children (10 in the experimental group, 10 in the control group) between the ages of 11–12 and continuing their education in Istanbul. In addition to the Personal Information Form, which included questions such as gender, age, education status, number of siblings, socio‐economic levels, and status of living with pets, the Oney Animal Love Scale and Scale of Behaviour for Animals were administered to the study group as pretest‐posttest. The group work was held on Saturdays at 13:00, consisted of six sessions, and in each session, activities for socialization, animal rights and child–animal interaction were carried out. The collected data were analysed in the SPSS 22.0 package program. At the end of the group work, it was observed that there was a positive significant difference in the total scores of the Oney Animal Love and Scale of Behaviour for Animals of the children in the experimental group.