Subject: HWC Submission - Abstract for:

Green Templeton Human Welfare Conference 2015. May 1&2 : Human Welfare in Conflict: Presentation Title: Managing Conflict through the process of Humane Education in Schools. Presented by: Dr. Helen Winter. Clinical Research Fellow at Green Templeton College; & Pei-Feng Su, Chief Executive Officer of ACTAsia.

Conflict comes in many guises and impacts on human health and welfare, through e.g. war, illness, disease, poverty, domestic abuse, child abuse…. Similarly conflict can also compromise the health and welfare of animals, e.g. outbreaks of rabies, other zoonoses, public health concerns relating to animals for human consumption, pollution of waterways, attacks on humans by aggressive dogs…. Animal welfare is a growing area of interest and scientific research. Some of the early studies relate to conflict within domestic settings and show the relationship between animal abuse, abuse of humans and domestic violence – known as The Cycle of Abuse. This pattern of behaviour typically begins in childhood when a child abuses an animal. As the child develops, the callous behaviour extends to the abuse and bullying of siblings/classmates/others, leading to further aggression in teenage years, culminating in criminal acts of violence in adult life.

The Cycle of Abuse can potentially be broken through a process known as Humane Education. Humane Education is based on a non-threatening format that does not impose a belief system, but attempts to create a platform for independent critical thinking, so individuals, even a young child, can evaluate information and make informed choices. It is an area of study that fosters in individuals a sense of empathy that extends to the web of life – to humans, animals and the natural world, recognising that all are interrelated.

ACTAsia, a registered charity, was set up 9 years ago by Pei-Feng Su, a Taiwanese/Chinese human rights activist. In 2012, after 6 years of research and collating data relating to areas of conflict in society within China, a 2 year Humane Education programme was prepared for children aged 5 – 8 years. A pilot programme was trialled in 2 State schools in China.

As China struggles to integrate economic growth on an unprecedented scale, social challenges are growing exponentially. Chinese government officials and school administrators understand that the ‘compassion deficit’ endemic in society directly contributes to corruption, crime, domestic violence and cruelty to animals. This awareness has created an interest and openness to the ACTAsia Humane Education programme, so with the ability of the Chinese government to enact sweeping changes in policy, this presents an unusual opportunity to impact society on a large scale.

All teaching materials are designed to be interactive, and are ‘age appropriate’, relevant to the Chinese culture, with professional teachers trained as humane educators delivering the programme in the classroom. An independent statistician monitors and evaluates the programme. Based on positive results at the end of the pilot programme, a further 3 year programme was introduced – Caring for Life : Humane Education Programme, with more schools joining and teaching humane education under the mandatory curriculum subject of Moral Education. Now in the final year of this pioneering 3 year project, the programme is running in 53 schools, in 8 cities of China, reaching 10,000 children, taught by 268 trained humane educators. ACTAsia is not aware of any other humane education program in the world that has been specifically designed and presented by professional teachers in a comprehensive format. It is a unique, pioneering 2 year course covering 5 subject areas, with each subject area made up of 10 units and is gaining momentum in China, a country of 1.35 billion people.

Further information as requested:

What is ACTAsia?

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• ACTAsia, is a registered charity/non-profit organisation in the UK, USA and The Netherlands and is registered as an educational company in China. ACTAsia was established in 2006 by Pei Feng Su – a former Chinese/Taiwanese human rights advocate.

• Staffed by a small core of 6 full time staff, 25 part-time volunteers with student groups in China assisting with project operations.

• Has an International Honorary Board of 20 Advisory Directors. (e.g. Dr.Helen Winter, co-presenter. Clinical Research Fellow at Green Templeton College.)

• ACTAsia is non-political and collaborates with governments, the medical and veterinary

professions; environmental agencies and academic institutes.

Aim: To research social issues of concern in Asian countries and facilitate programmes which will encourage an understanding of the need for respect and compassion, recognising the interrelationship of all living things.

Mission: Through the process of education, we promote respect, kindness and compassion towards humans and animals with respect for the environment.

Vision: We envision Asian societies that are compassionate, ecologically aware and respectful of all forms of life, to assist the global community in creating healthy and sustainable environments for all sentient beings

Activities: 3 main strands:

1. Schools Education: Caring for Life – Humane Education programme. 2 year course consisting of 10 units covering 5 subject areas for school children aged 5 -8 years. i) Web of Life; ii) Sentience; iii) Owner responsibility for owned (pet/companion) animals; iv) Interacting safely with dogs/Rabies awareness; v) Compassion & Empathy.

A Memorandum of Understanding is signed with participating schools with agreement from the Director of Education for the Province.

Humane Educators are trained at 6 training workshops during the 2 year programme.

Teaching materials have been prepared in co-operation with Chinese education personnel specific to the Chinese culture.

A teachers guide has been published and is approved for use in schools under the curriculum subject of Moral Education.

2. Continuing Professional Education: The veterinary profession plays an important role in raising societal animal welfare standards by incorporating more humane techniques into their work; managing the problem of stay animal control and rabies control; and educating the general public about animal owner responsibility.

The ACTAsia veterinary training programme is in association with Vets Beyond Borders Australia. In the past 4 years have trained more than 100 Chinese veterinarians in surgical techniques; anaesthesiology, euthanasia. The programme teaches vets i) how to improve their protocols for care and to view themselves as educators. ii) how to reduce the number of conflicts between humans and animals by helping the general public understand their responsibilities towards dog ownership and rabies control.

3. Community Education: There are community centres in most towns and villages with government organised activities for e.g. ladies groups; student groups; after schools groups. ACTAsia regularly gives presentations on citizens’ responsibilities towards society; and consumerism.

ACTAsia organises an annual ‘Fur Free Lifestyle Fashion Show’ in Beijing. This has been held as a high profile event with extensive media coverage; attended by major celebrities; British Embassy and Chinese officials.

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Information relating to:

Methodology and Evaluation of Caring for Life – Humane Education Programme in schools in China.

The Methodology for evaluation of the programme was recommended and overseen by Professor William Ellery Samuels, Director of Assessment & Accreditation, City University of New York, Staten Island, USA.

The ACTAsi presentation for the Green Templeton College Human Welfare Conference 2015 will focus on the evaluation of the Pilot Study for the academic year 2012-3013 which was set up under the guidance of Professor William Samuels . I attach an extract from his report. I have not included graphs and diagrams but they would be visually presented at the Conference.

Extract from report from Professor W.E.Samuels: The ACTAsia Pilot Study – a Brief Overview.

During the 2013-2014 academic year, ACTAsia conducted an evaluation of their pilot caring-for-life program, Caring for Life – Humane Education, in six elementary schools in two major cities. The evaluation they conducted was created after consulting with me, and appears to be have been conducted both carefully and objectively.

In addition, over the course of a week during the fall 2014 semester, I visited several of the schools participating in ACTAsia’s Caring for Life program. I observed classes participating in the program and talked with teachers and administrators about the program, its lessons, and the schools in general.

This report first covers the results of the 2013-2014 evaluation. After that, I will use the results of the evaluation along with the insights gained from the field visits to the schools to make some recommendations on ways to move forward.

Initial Program Evaluation Methods and Results

During the 2011-2012 academic year, ACTAsia consulted with me, Dr. Samuels, about conducting an evaluation of their flagship program that would adhere to rigorous, scientific standards of content validity, objectivity, and generalizability both to other Chinese schools as well as to other primary schools around the world. Based on these consultations, ACTAsia administered a small battery of instruments to a randomly-selected sampling of participating students and teachers during the 2012-2013 academic year. Further details about the participants, instruments, and procedure are given in the Methods section immediately below; an overall and then school-specific Results section follows the Methods section. Recommendations based on these results round out this section of the report.

Participants

Students and teachers from 34 classes across 7 schools participated in this pilot evaluation of ACTAsia’s Caring for Life education program. A subset of students from each of these participating classes were selected completely at random; the relevant knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of these selected students were studied and used to represent to entire classes. From most classes, 15 students were thus selected, but from one school 10 were selected per class and from another 5 were selected per class. Table 1 presents the number of students participating from each school by grade level and class.

All teachers of each of the classes also participated in the evaluation. Teachers were taught moral education as well as other subjects (e.g., literacy and math) Teachers in the Li Pei and the Tang Guo An school had prior knowledge of caring for life education; all other teachers had negligible prior knowledge of this area. ACTAsia’s Caring for Life education program was conducted at both of these schools in previous years , but none of the students in the current study participated in any prior to caring for life education programming.

Instruments.

All participating students completed the Humane Education Questionnaire (HEQ) an instrument developed by ACTAsia to measure self-reported knowledge and attitudes about five caring-for-life domains: “web of life,” “animal sentience,” “responsible pet ownership,” “dog bite prevention,”

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and “empathy and compassion.” Each domain was measured by four items, making the HEQ 20 items long.

Web of life includes issues relating to the inter-connectedness and -dependence of human life, animal life and ecological systems. Responsible pet ownership covers the proper selection and care of various pets, such as cats, dogs, birds, small mammals (e.g., rabbits and hamsters), reptiles, and fish. Dog bite prevention includes rabies awareness and ways to avoid conflict and handle dangerous situations; understanding body language and context to infer human and animal feelings and likely behaviors. Empathy and compassion focuses on inter-human relations, including bullying and navigating socially difficult situations. The HEQ questionnaire is roughly based on one created by Ascione (1983). The original instrument has become somewhat outdated, however, so the HEQ represents a more modern assessment of CLE and its newer content.

At all schools but one, all teachers completed the Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation–Checklist (TOCA-C). It was determined before the evaluation started that the school that did not complete the TOCA-C, Wen An, would not do so for feasibility reasons unrelated to the Caring for Life program or its evaluation.

Originally developed by Kellam, Branch, Agrawal, and Ensminger (1975), the TOCA-C measures the frequency of developmentally adaptive and maladaptive child behaviors. This instrument has been adapted to and extensively used in a wide range of school- and home-based studies. Versions of it are frequently used by mental health and social service practitioners to diagnose children for further treatment and intervention.

The full version of the TOCA-C used here has been well validated by Koth, Bradshaw, and Leaf (2009) across several populations of children. This instrument asks teachers to rate how often during the previous three weeks a given student has displayed a series of behaviors, including those in the two domains used in the current evaluation: prosociality and disruptiveness. Prosocial behaviors (e.g., “is friendly,” “is liked by classmates,” and “shows empathy & compassion for others’ feelings”) are those that demonstrate sociability and social integration. Disruptive behaviors (e.g., “breaks rules,” “lies,” and “harms property”) include destructive behaviors and demonstrations of externalizing behavioral problems.

Procedure

A representative of ACTAsia administered the HEQ to the selected students twice: once the day before the Caring for Life program began at a given school and once the day after the program ended. The HEQ was administered to the students in the same classroom and during the same period that the caring for life program was conducted. While these students completed the HEQ, the other students in the class completed unrelated coursework. Only two students (one at the Wen An school and one at the Si Ming school) who completed the HEQ during the pre-program administration did not complete it during the post-program administration; the data for these two students were not included in the analyses. All students who responded to the HEQ completed all of the items on it; such completeness would be unusual among U.S. populations.

In the same period that the selected students completed the HEQ, the ACTAsia representative gave copies of the TOCA-C to the class’s head teacher. The representative explained that the teacher should complete one TOCA-C for each of the selected students. The teachers began completing copies of the TOCA-C during this period, but had up to one week to return all of them to the representative. Admirably again, none of the TOCA-C forms contained any missing data.

The ACTAsia representative compiled all data from the HEQ and TOCA-C for all schools. She then forwarded the linked, anonymized data to me for analysis.

Analyses

Primary analyses were conducted using multilevel models of change with full maximum likelihood estimations; however, the results are presented here based on paired t-tests given the recognizability and greater ease of understanding t-tests. For these data, there are only a few practical differences between multilevel models of change and t-tests, and any real differences that do exist are noted in the text. All analyses were conducted with R, version 3.0.2 (R Core Team, 2013); R packages used included psych (Revelle, 2014) and nlme (Pinheiro et al., 2013).

There are three general sets of analyses. The first is the effect of the program on the frequency of students’ prosocial behaviors. The second is the effect on the frequency of students’ disruptive behaviors. The third is the effect on students’ knowledge of caring-for-life issues. All three sets of analyses were conducted on all the schools combined together and then again on each school individually.

Prosocial Behaviors 4

Overall Results

The teachers in all schools rated students to be significantly more prosocial after they participated the Caring for Life program compared with before they participated. This finding is shown graphically in Figure 1. This figure shows how prosocial the students are were as being both before and after participating in ACTAsia’s program; higher numbers here indicate that students are did more prosocial things. The left-hand bar shows how prosocial the average student (across all schools) was found to be before the program; this bar is not as high as the bar to the right, indicating that before the program the students were not rated as being as prosocial as they were after the program.These results are also shown numerically in Table 2. The first row in this table shows the average prosocial score before the program (4.54) and after the program (5.37). The S.D. column shows how spread out individually scores were around these averages (it in fact is the average distance of individual scores from the average score; e.g. pre-program scores were, on average, 0.86 points away from 4.54). The N column is simply the number of students for whom we have data.

The t column provides the t-statistic for the test of whether the average post-program score (5.37) was different then the average pre-program score (4.54). Larger t-statistics—either largely positive or largely negative—indicate a greater difference between the post- and pre-program scores.

Finally, the p column presents the probability that that difference between the post- and pre-program score is due to random chance (and thus does not represent an actual difference between the two). These probabilities can be converted to percentages by multiplying them by 100. Therefore, e.g., there is about a 4% (p = .040) that the pre–post difference at the Hu Li school is due to chance and not due to a real difference. In general, researchers set the limit for p-values at .05; in other words, they allow there to be no more than a 5% chance that a difference is due to chance. We, however, are conducting a large number of tests on pieces of the same data set. Given this, the p-values presented here are only meant to be interpreted loosely. We can be very certain that among all of the schools, there is a clear increase in prosocial behaviors over the course of the ACTAsia program; however, we need to be more careful when we interpret the results for each individual school.

The p-value tells us how sure we can be that we found an effect, but it doesn’t directly tell us whether the effect we found was a large or small one. (If we look closely enough, we can see things, even if they are very small.) The effect size is usually measured for t-scores using Cohen’s d. Although there is no definite way of saying what a large value of Cohen’s d is, Cohen (1988) himself argued that a value of d = 0.5 could be considered moderate and a value of d = 0.8 could be considered large. Cohen’s d for all of the schools combined is 0.76, indicating a moderately large effect. Therefore, we can say that the effect of the Caring for Life program had a reliable and moderately large effect on these children’s prosociality. The school-level analyses comprise groups that are too small to produce reliably interpretable Cohen’s d scores.

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