Humane education

[3] Humane education encourages cognitive, affective, and behavioral growth through personal development of critical thinking, problem solving, perspective-taking, and empathy as it relates to people, animals, the planet, and the intersections among them.

[6] The animal welfare organizations also visited schools and other youth centers to teach “push-in” programs that supplemented—and possibly augmented—the children’s other education.

Since the beginning, humane education has focused on a constructivist approach to teaching and includes methods such as service-learning and experiential learning.

The author reports that "[s]tudents who participated in the program displayed significantly greater gains in prosociality than similar students who didn’t.

Another large-scale, randomized control trial[12] found that a 12-lesson humane education program significantly improved lower elementary students' attitudes and behaviors about the environment.

The humane education program was taught by the students' teachers during one period of the normal school day over one academic year.

[13] Another experimental-vs-control study[14] compared the effect of the HEART humane education program on elementary students in several schools in two cities in the United States.

Overall, the authors state that "[t]he results support the effectiveness of a humane education program to teach a relatively large and diverse group of upper elementary students to learn about animal welfare issues and to improve their prosocial behaviors.

As the authors states, "The Animal Fun program appears to be effective in improving social and behavioural outcomes".