Session D: Animals Are Us: Applying the Common Ingroup Identity Model to Humane Education

This session will present a study that explored the applicability of the Common Ingroup Identity Model (CIIM), used widely for combating racism, to Humane Education. The CIIM credits social categorization with both reducing and creating intergroup bias. It postulates decategorization and recategorization as factors changing ingroup boundaries, so former outgroup members can be seen as current ingroup members. The researcher aimed at measuring the effect of CIIM techniques on graduate student teachers’ attitudes toward animals and on their willingness to include animal-centered humane themes in their instruction. This study used exploratory mixed-methods design, in which the qualitative online focus group phase followed and explained the quantitative quasi-experimental phase. Two intact groups of graduate student teachers were randomly assigned to either the Experimental or to the Control Group. Demographic Questionnaire, Animal Attitude Scale (Herzog, Betchart, & Pittman, 1991), and Animal-Centered Instruction Scale (Gatarek, 2018) were administered to both groups pre- and post-intervention.The results of both qualitative and quantitative analysis will be presented. Implications of research findings to teachers’ preparation programs will be discussed