Does Equine Interaction Facilitate Emotional Safety and Learning for College Students within an Agricultural-Based Classroom?

Effective teaching requires an educational environment that promotes learning, and yet, developing such an environment can be challenging within today's agricultural-based classroom for educators due to the trend to a more virtual teaching format and less hands-on learning. Animal interaction, particularly equine activities, has been shown to assist educators in the development of an emotionally safe environment for promoting learning. However, research is lacking as to whether the interaction with the animal needs to be direct or indirect within the collegiate educational environment to observe benefits. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the impact of equine interaction, both direct and indirect, within an educational environment on the emotional safety and learning for the college student within the agricultural-based classroom. Three course types were observed within the agricultural-based educational environment that included courses with no equine interaction (Group A) and courses with equine interaction, both direct (Group B) and indirect (Group C) interaction with the horse. Indirect interaction included items such as observation of equine handling via a video or gaining knowledge from reading online materials, but not engaging in direct, hands-on activities with the horse. Development of emotional safety within the students enrolled within these courses was measured using a self-reporting emotional safety evaluation. Due to the structure of the scale, a decrease in emotional safety indicated a positive change. Learning, both development of semantic and procedural memory, was measured using a student-completed knowledge examination and an instructor-completed skill evaluation, respectively. While significant improvement in emotional safety was not observed within any of the course types, a weak negative correlation was found between emotional safety and semantic memory for students enrolled in equine courses, both direct (R = -0.55, R2 = 0.28) and indirect (R = -0.25, R2 = 0.06) interaction, finding as emotional safety scores lowered to the ideal range that knowledge improved. In addition, students within equine courses showed semantic memory development in specific areas of equine sciences (Group B: Grooming/Tacking, p = 0.03; Group C: Equine Behavior, p = 0.04) and direct equine interaction resulted in development of equine-based procedural memory in all four skill areas measured within the study (p = 0.00). As such, learning is promoted through equine interaction, whether direct or indirect interaction, within the agricultural-based classroom, suggesting that both forms of equine interaction can be a valuable educational tool for the instructor within the collegiate setting.

Single-laboratory validation of a method for the determination of phenols and phenates in disinfectant formulations by liquid chromatography with UV detection.

A single-laboratory validation study was conducted for an LC method using UV detection for the simultaneous determination of the active ingredients o-phenylphenol (OPP), p-tert-amylphenol (PTAP), and o-benzyl-p-chlorophenol (OBPCP) in disinfectant formulations. Samples were extracted, the extracts diluted with acidified methanol, and the active ingredients separated by LC with a gradient mobile phase and quantified by using UV detection at 285 nm. For each active ingredient, the RSD was < or = 3.7%, and the intermediate reproducibility was < or = 3.4%. The active ingredient content of the spiked samples analyzed in this study ranged from 0.075 to 10.1% for the individual phenol active ingredients. The average recovery ranges were 86.7-104.9, 82.8-115.6, and 91.6-114.7% for the active ingredients OPP, PTAP, and OBPCP, respectively, for the concentration range of 0.075-10.1%. This method, with a relatively short chromatographic run time (about 15 min), proved to be reliable and convenient for analyses of products or samples containing all or a combination of these phenol active ingredients.

Adolescent psychological well-being by identity style.

High school-age adolescents (N=262) in two samples completed a measure of identity style, along with measures of self-esteem, hopelessness, delinquent attitudes, educational expectations, and optimism/efficacy. Analysis of variance was used to evaluate the relationship between identity style and the other psychosocial variables. Participants classified as having a diffuse/avoidant orientation had lower self-esteem and higher delinquent attitude scores than those with either an information or normative orientation. At the same time, the diffuse-avoidant style was associated with higher hopelessness and lower optimism/efficacy scores than the normative and information styles. The normative and information styles did not differ significantly in terms of the dependent variables. Results also indicated that males were more likely to be diffused and females more likely to be information-oriented.