Paws For Thought

This research aims to explore and develop a framework for understanding the mediating role of dogs in people’s learning processes in vocational education and training settings. Specifically, it aims to answer two questions: In what ways do people use dogs as mediating artifacts in their meaning-making processes; and what are the effects of dogs in mediating individual and group learning processes? This study is significant because it offers a framework for understanding the mediating role of dogs in people’s learning processes. It therefore provides a map to understand in what ways dogs may be seen to function as artifacts and how this works. It also opens up ways of seeing and understanding what may occur in other settings, and provides new ways of being attentive to what happens in the classroom. The examination of the processes that take place during people’s interaction with the dogs also offers a framework to understand how and why these interactions make the results reported by researchers possible. It may therefore open the way for improving animal assisted therapy and education programmes, and adapting them to situations beyond therapeutic and childhood education settings.