Relationships between Caregiving to Domestic Goats and Gender and Interest in Science 1

Abstract

We conducted a questionnaire survey with 9- and 10-year-old children in two elementary schools which kept goats, and examined the differences in the children's interest in animals and natural science in terms of the extent of interaction with the goats and gender. The experienced schoolchildren took care of and interacted with the goats on a daily basis, while the inexperienced schoolchildren did not take care of them. The results showed that caregiving experience made the children feel familiar with goats, and express ideas about better coexistence with goats, more than those who did not take care of them. The mere experience of caregiving for the goats did not become a strong motivation for the children to prefer natural science and pursue scientific professions. However, more girls were interested in animal-related jobs and coexistence with goats than boys. Goats could be a unique teaching resource.

In Japan, to enrich children's life experiences, elementary schools try to give children various stimuli such as an association with nature and experience of a traditional lifestyle as stipulated in the Education's Guidelines for the Course of Study from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan (1998). As a new concept, animal-assisted education has gradually become of interest (Hatogai, 2006). Japanese elementary schools have a tradition of keeping animals as educational tools. Until the end of the Second World War, the principal aim of keeping animals in schools was to let children experience physical labor and develop skills for raising small farm animals such as rabbits and chickens as a part of family responsibilities. At that time, the primary industries were the most common, while today the percentage of people engaged in agriculture and forestry of the total labor force has decreased to less than 4% (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 2010).

Today, as many as 88% of Japanese elementary schools keep animals (Hatogai, 2006), and these are mostly small animals such as rabbits, hamsters, birds, fish, and insects (Hayasaka, Aoyama, & Sugita, 2000). These animals are kept in schoolyards as school animals or in classrooms as class animals. Society is changing and the aim of animal-assisted education today is to educate children about life and nature, learn about relationships between humans and nature, learn about interaction with animals and other people, and enhance learning effects, etc. (Yokoyama, 2006). In other words, it is clear that animal-assisted education is closely related to science education. In science education, Japan has a problem to be solved. In this report, “science” refers to the natural sciences.

According to Osborne, Simon, and Collins (2003), the number of Japanese scientists is high (3,548 per million of the general population). Nevertheless, fewer women major in science than men, and Japanese women show a similar tendency to Western women, i.e., the percentage of women who have obtained Ph.D. degrees is in decreasing order of health sciences, life sciences, and engineering (OECD, 2002). Accordingly, fewer Japanese women choose scientific professions than men. The low number of female researchers in science is caused not only by the small supply of women in science coming out of universities and colleges, but also by the environment surrounding female researchers who have cited disadvantages for women in hiring, promotion, and evaluation and insufficient readiness to receive female researchers with understanding and support systems regarding childbirth, child care, and nursing care (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology – Japan, 2003).

It was also shown that environmental factors regarding science education influence gender differences; namely, girls do not feel that adults expect them to have an interest in scientific matters (Fujiwara, 2004; Nakazawa, 2004). It is suggested that adults hesitate to encourage girls to take scientific courses because of the difficult research environment for women or traditional beliefs that science is for men. This leads to a failure to establish female researchers as role models for girls (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology – Japan, 2003) and the cycle continues. These are important policy lessons in science education systems, together with working systems in research areas. A similar phenomenon of gender differences regarding science has been reported in Western countries (Dawson, 2000; Jones, Howe, & Rua, 2000; Osborne, et al., 2003; Schreiner & Sjoberg, 2006).

Gender-biased phenomena in schools where girls were underrepresented have been pointed out in the USA, e.g., boys receive more attention from teachers and behave more actively than girls (Lee, Marks, & Byrd, 1994; Sadker & Sadker, 1994). There are similar phenomena in Japan. For example, Kimura (1999) reported that teachers called on boys more frequently than girls in class. Even if the teachers noticed their gender-biased behaviors, they had to deal with boys because there were many more irregular utterances by boys than girls. As a result, teachers had to reduce behaviors toward girls. Children also noticed the gender-biased behaviors of teachers.

On the other hand, irrespective of gender, 12% of Japanese university students who majored in science had decided their scientific courses by elementary school age, and 25% of women and 24% of men had decided by lower secondary school age. In particular, the female students answered that their teachers' encouragements had influenced their decision to take scientific courses (Kiyohara, 1996). These data indicate the importance of compulsory education in elementary and lower secondary schools in terms of science education and scientific careers. Many Japanese came to have negative feelings toward school science at lower secondary school age according to the results of TIMSS2007 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science 2007, cited from reports by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research) by the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement).

The major reasons why lower secondary school students disliked school science was that it was difficult, there was a lot of memorization, and it was hard to think for themselves. On the other hand, as for the importance of studying school science, they thought that it was interesting and important to understand nature (Kawano, 2004). Thus, Japanese lower secondary school students did not strongly link school science with their daily lives or futures. An international comparison in ROSE (The Relevance of Science Education) also demonstrated the attitudes of Japanese children toward science (Schreiner & Sjoberg, 2006). Japanese lower secondary school students were interested in science (although the scores were not so high among other countries), but they were also interested in other school subjects and a sense of values for society in areas other than science. Scientists are not necessarily heroes or attractive role models for the younger generation with post-materialistic values in highly developed societies.

Western adolescents perceive science as dangerous and creating pollution, as well as being important and useful for society and everyday life (Francis & Greer, 1999; Jones, et al., 2000). However, Japanese lower secondary school students who liked school science had nature and life experiences such as growing, playing with, picking and eating plants, etc., more frequently and enjoyed playing outside more by elementary school age than students who disliked school science; the tendency was more conspicuous in boys (Ikegami, 2004).

The authors have supported local elementary schools in keeping domestic goats (Capra hircus) in urban areas. We select appropriate goats and introduce them into elementary schools, advise teachers and children about their care, and monitor animal welfare. The goats are a Japanese native breed (shiba yagi), which are easy to keep because of their small size (20–35 kg) and tameness. Goats were familiar to Japanese until the 1960s. Formerly, many farmers kept goats and there were about 670,000 goats at the peak in 1955. After that, the number of goats decreased sharply to about 28,500 by 1997, because of industrialization and rapid economic growth, urbanization, and modernization of agriculture. Recently, the usefulness of goats has been reevaluated as a source of healthy food and to control weeds in Japan's increasing number of fallow fields (Manda, 2000). However, people do not actually have a chance to see real goats in daily life, and keeping them in elementary schools is very rare, especially in urban areas.

While there are excellent ideas for animal-assisted education with teachers' support (Hayasaka, et al., 2000; Rud, Jr. & Beck, 2003), there are few curricula and little evidence regarding the educational benefits compared with many practices that have been developed to encourage students to understand science concept using various animals in the laboratory (Abramson, Curb, Barber, & Sokolowski, 2011; Abramson, Hilker, Becker, Barber, & Miskovsky, 2011). The unique practice of keeping goats in elementary schools is no exception. As a pilot study, we surveyed children about the goats and science in elementary schools that kept goats. Nine- and 10-year-old children in this study were in the concrete operation period (Piaget & Inhelder, 1966) in which they come to acquire the logical thinking needed in science. We discuss the possibilities of this innovative teaching method, using goats as a hands-on tool.

Method

Participants and Setting

A total of 225 children participated in this study. They were 9 or 10 years of age and in the fourth grade of two public elementary schools (experienced and inexperienced schools) in the same city in the Tokyo metropolitan area in Japan. There were only two schools which kept goats in the city and both schools agreed to participate in this study. Both schools were similar in size, located in residential sites and conducted similar life experience learning such as rice and vegetable growing and excursions to nature parks under the same Board of Education, although how they kept goats as school animals was different.

The experienced school group consisted of 116 children (54 boys, 62 girls) in four classes. Their data were collected for two years (two classes in each year), i.e., 64 children participated in the first year and 52 children in the second year. There were three goats in the school back yard, and the fourth grade children took care of the goats when on duty and interacted freely with them in break times between classes. Under the teachers' supervision, 12–16 children were divided into two groups and one group fed the goats while the other group cleaned the paddock and pen during one week on school days. The groups took turns at the work every day during the week. They also checked the goats' health and played with them while working. The work took about 30 minutes each day. Thus, every child took care of, and closely interacted with, the goats for at least one week each month. The children and their parents took care of the goats on weekends and holidays. In addition, the school had several annual events related to the goats, e.g., class discussions, investigation learning, visiting the university farm and special lessons by university students at the school. The experienced school kept the goats as part of an annual Integrated Study, which is similar to an interdisciplinary class. At the end of the school year, the children taught the third grade children how to take care of the goats, who then took over the care. As school animals, the fourth grade teachers used the goats at the same time in joint classes or with the same teaching plan. Figures 1 and 2 show scenes of the activities.

Fig. 1.

Daily care of the goats by the children such as feeding and cleaning the paddock (left) and spending free time with the goats in breaks between classes (right) in the experienced school.

Fig. 2.

Annual events related to goats in the experienced school (left: visiting the University Farm, and right: special lessons by University students).

The inexperienced school group consisted of 109 children (49 boys, 60 girls) in three classes. There were two goats in the schoolyard, but only specific members in charge of keeping school animals in the fifth and sixth grades took care of the goats. The participants in the inexperienced school could only see the goats freely in break times between classes, but they did not receive intentional educational opportunities with the goats.

Procedure

The classroom teachers in both schools delivered a questionnaire to the children in class. The questionnaire said that it was not an examination and there were no right or wrong answers, and the children were requested to answer honestly. The questionnaire consisted of open-ended and fixed-choice questions. In open-ended questions, the children reported the kinds of animals which they had kept at home, school subjects they liked, jobs which they wished to do as adults, and ideas about how to get along better with goats. In the fixed-choice questions, they checked whether they liked books and TV programs about animals (like/neutral/dislike). In addition, the experienced schoolchildren chose three items they liked about keeping goats. Animal-keeping at home (real experience) and preference of media about animals (virtual experience) are related to children's fundamental experience of animals and science in daily life. Preferences for school subjects, ideas about coexistence with goats and preferences for keeping goats are related to scientific interest in their current school life. Potential jobs they may obtain as an adult are related to interest in a scientific career in the future.

Results

Table 1 shows the children's life experiences regarding animals at home. Although as many as 88% of children in both schools had some experience of keeping animals at home, only 37% of children had kept warm-blooded animals. Chi-squared analysis was not statistically significant for any of the animal groups. Regarding virtual experiences about animals through media, the children in both schools preferred TV programs (75%) to books (44%). Chi-squared comparison was not statistically significant for either media (TV: χ²₃ = 5.58, p > .05; books: χ²₃ = 7.57, p > .05).

TABLE 1

Percentage of Children Who have Kept Animals at Home (Multiple Answers)

Type of Animals	Experienced		Inexperienced		χ²
Type of Animals	Boy	Girl	Boy	Girl	χ²
Mammals and birds	33	45	27	42	4.92
Reptiles, amphibians, and fish	65	60	69	58	1.77
Insects	33	29	53	38	7.35
Invertebrates	15	10	22	17	3.48
None	11	13	14	12	0.29

df= 3. All ps > .05.

Table 2 shows children's preferences for school subjects. Chi-squared comparison was statistically significant in five subjects and residual analysis was performed in each subject. In terms of physical education, more boys in the inexperienced school liked it (p < .05). Science was the second most preferred subject, and fewer girls in the experienced school liked it (p < .05). In terms of drawing and manual arts, fewer boys in the experienced school liked it (p < .001). As for music, fewer boys (p < .001) and more girls (p < .05) in the inexperienced school liked it. In terms of special activities, fewer boys (p < .01) and girls (p < .05) in the experienced school and more girls in the inexperienced school (p < .001) liked them.

TABLE 2

Percentage of Children Who Preferred School Subjects (Multiple Answers)

School Subject	Experienced		Inexperienced		χ²	^p
School Subject	Boy	Girl	Boy	Girl	χ²	^p
Physical education	48	34	57	33	8.96	< .05
Science	43	21	43	28	9.07	< .05
Drawing and manual arts	13	42	31	42	14.30	< .01
Arithmetic	30	23	24	23	0.91
Music	22	32	4	35	16.81	< .001
Special activities	2	5	20	28	23.15	< .001
Japanese	4	10	4	17
Social science	4	3	4	3
Moral education	2	3	2	7

df = 3.

Jobs which children wished to get as adults were classified into four types. Scientific jobs included those for which the work needs scientific knowledge and skills with a specific training course and/or certification, such as scientists, engineers, certified weather forecasters and health-related professionals (doctor, dietitian and pharmacist). Animal-related jobs were those such as clerks at pet shops, breeders, trainers, and zoo, aquarium, and animal shelter staff, other than scientific professionals. The other jobs referred to neither science nor animals, e.g., clerks, athletes, artists, entertainers, teachers, office workers, and care workers. There were some children who had not considered their future careers. Categorical regression analysis was performed to clarify the factors which influenced the jobs which children wished to get as adults. As a result, standardized partial regression coefficients of gender and whether or not the children had taken care of the goats were statistically significant for job selection (Table 3). Next, a hierarchical log-linear model was used to investigate the relationships among the three variables. The results of the goodness-of-fit tests for each model are shown in Table 4. The most appropriate model was adopted, i.e., gender and caregiving experience of goats were independently related with the jobs which children wished to get as adults. Table 5 shows the results of residual analysis. In terms of gender, more boys and fewer girls were interested in becoming scientific professionals. However, the opposite tendency was found regarding animal-related jobs, and fewer boys and more girls were interested. In terms of caregiving experience, more children in the experienced school and fewer children in the inexperienced school were interested in the other jobs. Fewer children in the experienced school and more children in the inexperienced school had not considered their future careers.

TABLE 3

Categorical Regression Analysis with Jobs Children Wished to Get as Adults as a Dependent Value

	β	p
Gender	.36	< .001
Caregiving of goats	.21	< .001
Animals at home	.05
Preference for books	.02
Preference for TV	−.12

R	.46	< .001

TABLE 4

Hierarchical Log-linear Model Regarding Gender, Caregiving of Goats, and Jobs Children Wished to Get as Adults

Relationship Model	df	χ²	p	AIC
[Job × Gender × Caregiving]	0
[Job × Gender][Job × Caregiving][Gender × Caregiving]	3	7.17	.07	1.17
[Job × Gender][Job × Caregiving]	4	9.37	.05	1.37

TABLE 5

Percentage of Children Who Wished to Get Jobs in Certain Fields as Adults and Results of Residual Analysis

Job Field	Gender		p	School		p
Job Field	Boy	Girl	p	Experienced	Inexperienced	p
Scientific	12	2	< .01	5	8
Animal-related	3	15	< .01	11	7
Others	23	32		32	22	< .05
Undecided	8	6		4	11	< .01

The experienced school children preferred direct association with goats such as playing, feeding and physical contact to indirect association such as observing them, thinking about them, and studying them, which could contribute to a wider and deeper scientific interest (Table 6). A hierarchical log-linear model was used to investigate the relationships among the three variables, i.e., gender, job, and things the children liked about keeping goats. As a result, preference for physical contact with goats and talking to goats were related to the jobs which children wished to get as adults. In residual analysis (Table 7), the children who preferred physical contact with goats were less interested in becoming scientific professionals, but were more interested in animal-related jobs. More children who preferred talking to goats were interested in becoming scientific professionals.

TABLE 6

Percentage of Children Who Chose Items They Liked About Keeping Goats and a Hierarchical Log-linear Model in the Experienced School

Activity	Respondent	Optimal Model	df	χ²	p	AIC
Playing with goats	74	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	4.42	.73	−9.58
Feeding	72	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	10.41	.17	−3.59
Physical contact with goats	63	[Job × Gender][Job × Item]	4	5.80	.22	−2.20
Drawing goats	26	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	6.16	.52	−7.84
Talking with friends about goats	16	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	9.41	.23	−4.59
Talking to goats	14	[Job × Gender][Job × Item]	6	13.04	.04	1.04
Observing goats	13	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	3.39	.85	−10.61
Hearing goats	7	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	5.38	.61	−8.62
Thinking about goats	7	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	6.82	.45	−7.18
Studying goats	6	[Job × Gender][Item]	7	5.27	.63	−8.73

TABLE 7

Percentage of Children Who Wished to Get Jobs in Certain Fields as Adults According to Preference for Keeping Goats and Results of Residual Analysis

Type of Field	Physical Contact with Goats		p	Talking to Goats		p
Type of Field	Yes	No	p	Yes	No	p
Scientific	3	7	< .05	4	6	< .01
Animal-related	17	3	< .05	1	20
Others	36	26		9	53
Undecided	6	1		0	7

Table 8 shows the number of characters which children wrote down about how to get along better with goats. Japanese uses the number of characters to count the quantity of a description the same as the number of words in English. Many children (88%) indicated direct affiliative association with goats such as feeding, physical contact, and talking, and only 10% of the children indicated an indirect association with goats such as studying and careful observation. When two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) (experience and gender) was performed on the total number of characters the children wrote down, the main effects for both factors were statistically significant. The children in the experienced school wrote more characters than those in the inexperienced school and the girls wrote more characters than the boys. The interaction effect was not statistically significant (F_1,221 = 1.03, p > .05). The number of characters they wrote was unrelated to whether they liked science (t₁₂₄ = 0.23, p > .05) or whether they were interested in scientific professions (t₂₂₃ = 0.26, p > .05). However, the children who had an interest in animal-related jobs wrote more characters than those who did not (t₄₂ = 2.63, ρ < .05).

TABLE 8

Number of Japanese Characters which Children Wrote Down About How to Get Along Better with Goats

	M	SD	F _1,221	p
Experience with goats
Experienced	21.83	15.73	4.50	< .05
Inexperienced	17.66	16.68
Gender
Boy	15.61	12.55	13.96	< .001
Girl	23.35	18.20

Discussion

Parents of the children in this study may think it difficult to keep animals, i.e., urban residence and young children are associated with small houses and unsteady income. Place of residence is a factor in keeping pets in Japan; people who live in urban areas tend to refrain from keeping pets, especially dogs, or keep other small animals instead such as mice and birds (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2004). Another study also found household income to be a similar factor; people with lower income tended to refrain from keeping pets, especially dogs, or kept other small animals instead. Furthermore, if there were children under 12 years of age in the household, they tended to refrain from keeping dogs and cats and kept other small animals instead (Ozaki, 2004).

However, the majority of children had some experience of keeping animals at home irrespective of school or gender, similar to children in Western countries (Bjerke, Kaltenborn, & Odegardstuen, 2001), but more than half of children had not experienced keeping warm-blooded interactive animals at home. As for virtual experience, it is easier for children to access media about animals than keep real animals. Many children showed a fondness for animals, especially in terms of TV programs. TIMSS2007 also showed that Japanese children spent a good deal of time watching TV and video programs (cited from reports by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research). Children in Western countries also enjoy animal-related TV programs (Kidd & Kidd, 1990; Bjerke, et al., 2001). This implies that children can learn much about animals through not only real experience with animals, but also media. That there were no statistically significant differences regarding caregiving experience of goats and gender indicated that the children in this study generally had similar fundamental backgrounds regarding animals.

In other indicators, more boys liked physical education, fewer boys and more girls liked music in the inexperienced school. These results were consistent with a previous report that more boys played games involving gross motor activity on the playgrounds than girls, and more girls were good at music than boys (Kimura, 1999). The experienced school children showed fewer gender-specific differences in those subjects. However, in this study, even the fourth grade elementary school children already showed gender differences in science preference and in considering scientific professions. According to the PISA2009 (Programme for International Student Assessment 2009) by the OECD, male and female 15-year-old Japanese students performed equally well at science (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan, 2010). Unfortunately, Japanese tended to have negative feelings toward school science at lower secondary school age among countries according to the results of TIMSS2007 (cited from reports by the National Institute for Educational Policy Research), and more girls consistently had a passive attitude toward science than boys from the upper grade of elementary school (the fifth grade; National Institute for Educational Policy Research, 2002). In Japan, science education starts in the third grade of elementary school. Animal-assisted education is especially related to biology in science education, but elementary school education in Japan does not clearly discriminate the various scientific branches. Girls probably start studying science with a positive or a neutral attitude, but their interest soon diminishes.

However, more girls in this study were interested in animal-related jobs, though not as scientific professionals, as well coexistence with goats, than boys. The curriculum in this study did not consider the children's gender. In the Education's Guidelines for Course of Study from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology-Japan (1998), elementary school children must study insects and fish, but these are difficult for children to have any psychosocial interaction with, and there are few birds or mammals other than humans in science subjects. Unfortunately, human-animal interactions (Maeda, Koda, Nakajima, Watanabe, & Nanri, 2010) and animal communication (Jones, et al., 2000), in which more girls were interested than boys, are not taught systematically. Therefore, even if students are interested in mammals, they do not connect this with scientific interest unless they are provided with educational support. Children's stereotypic image of scientists was men doing experiments in laboratories, not men and women working with nature. This tendency strengthens with increasing age (Chambers, 1983). Fortunately, children's gender differences were negligible in the perception about the importance of science (Jones, et al., 2000; Schreiner & Sjoberg, 2006). Children, especially girls, should be given appropriate images of science and scientific careers and enhanced enjoyment of science (Francis & Greer, 1999). By adding a new viewpoint, their interest in animals would increase their interest in science and enrich their possibilities in the future.

Regarding the relations between goat caregiving experience and interest in science, caregiving experience made the elementary school children feel familiar with, and express ideas about better coexistence with, goats more than those who were simply near them. However, the goat caregiving experience alone did not become a strong motivation for the children to prefer science and pursue scientific professions in the future. Only a few children in the experienced school showed a much greater preference relating to scientific interest in associating with goats, and only a few children in both schools indicated ideas that coexistence with goats was related to scientific interest. Although fewer girls in the experienced school preferred science, it was still the second most preferred subject overall. Although the events related to the goats in the experienced school included scientific aspects, the children did not seem to understand it. For both schools, devising curricula using goats as a hands-on experience in their school life could stimulate their scientific interest. Science activities had a direct effect on science attitudes (George & Kaplan, 1998). Freedman (1997) reported that a hands-on instruction program positively influenced the upper secondary school students' attitude toward science and their achievement in science knowledge. The importance of hands-on instruction programs is also emphasized in university education (Abramson, Curb, et al., 2011).

The present study also showed that the experienced school children who preferred physical contact with goats showed an interest in animal-related jobs, but did not expand their interest to consider becoming a scientific professional. However, some children who preferred talking to goats, which is a more complex relationship, had an interest in becoming scientific professionals. These results also suggest the importance of hands-on instruction programs. Our study indicates that goats could give children observation skills and foster interest in science.

To devise a new curriculum, further research is needed to elucidate the mechanism regarding how caregiving experience of goats and gender affect children's interest in science, whether factors such as the influence of teachers and parents (Kiyohara, 1996; George & Kaplan, 1998) and children's behavior are important. For example, Kawano (2004) reported that elementary school children who disliked school science and girls tended to act as assistants or observers in group work in science experiments, while children who liked school science and boys tended to do core work. Animals are interactive hands-on educational tools and children behave differently in animal-assisted education compared to standard experiments.

Interaction with domestic animals in schools other than pets that may be kept at home enriches children's experiences with nature, especially in urban areas. Goats could be a unique teaching resource because they are easy for even children to handle, are an appropriate size to play with, and provide a common theme to help to unify the class. Furthermore, it might be easy for Japanese to feel empathy with goats because they know that goats were common farm animals until only some decades ago in Japan.

Moreover, because goats are farm animals they could also be useful to teach children in the upper grades about ecosystems and social systems related to agriculture. Children can also observe and understand the body composition of herbivorous animals and the functions of rumination. In addition, interacting with goats and other farm animals may foster empathy toward both animal and human welfare, thereby promoting humane education (Ascione, 1997). Interacting with goats may also help students manage stress (Levinson & Mallon, 1997) and develop social and interactive skills that could indirectly promote science education.

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