Fisher and Cozens examined the effectiveness of The Building Reading Confidence for Kids (BaRK) program located within New South Wales, Australia, in re-engaging a disengaged reader and improving literacy skills. Free to the public, BaRK is an eight week after-school and library-based canine-assisted literacy program serving middle to upper primary school students by providing support for reluctant readers to practice reading with a therapy dog team. Founded in 2008, BaRK provides literacy assistance in association with Delta Classroom Canines, a program that arranges teams of dogs and their handlers to assist individual or groups of children who have difficulty in gaining reading and writing skills in a classroom setting. In this article, Fisher and Cozens first offer a broad overview of the development of canine-assisted literacy programs and training organizations, as well as currently accessible canine-assisted literacy programming located within Australia specifically. Second, these authors discuss the state of research available on the effectiveness of canine-assisted literacy programs. Lastly, Fisher and Cozens present their findings from their evaluative case study investigating the effectiveness of the BaRK program.
The authors of this study indicate that few qualitative or quantitative empirical research studies exist measuring the effectiveness of canine-assisted literacy programs on literacy achievement gains. However, they report that those existing studies do highlight improvements in the following areas: oral reading accuracy and fluency, reading engagement and literacy skills including describing, explaining, analyzing and inferring.
Addressing this gap in Australian research literature particularly, the purpose of this study was to measure the correlation between one student's attitude towards reading and test scores as well as achievement gains in reading comprehension and oral reading accuracy. This study examines the effect of the BaRK program on one disengaged child chronologically aged 9 years 10 months, who participated in eight weeks of programming. The program conducted one 15 minute session, once a week with the same dog and handler team in a library setting. Researchers employed standardized tests administered before and after program completion to compare reading accuracy and comprehension scores of the individual child involved in the intervention with same chronologically-aged peers. The Neale Analysis of Reading Ability was selected as the instrument measuring reading ability, and researchers converted raw scores into the following measurements: reading comprehension age, percentile rank, and stanine. Fisher and Cozens also conducted a qualitative interview with the child involved in the study to assess correlations between reading attitude and alterations in test results.
Results from this study present substantial positive gains in both reading accuracy and comprehension, with the student making greater achievement gains in reading comprehension. In a five-month period, the student increased in reading accuracy by one year and six months, gained nine percentile rank scores, and improved in stanine score from a low achievement score to an average achievement score. Further, the student increased in reading comprehension by two years and eleven months, gained 29 percentile rank scores, and improved in stanine score from an average achievement score to a moderately high achievement score. Results from the interview conducted revealed the student's positive enjoyment of and interest in the program may have increased internal motivation and engagement for optimal learning, which researchers infer correlate with improvements in test results. The authors note that canine-assisted literacy programs may provide an optimal learning experience that can re-engage disengaged learners.
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