Professional training of a future teacher-psychologist to use the hippotherapy method in inclusive education

Inclusive education aims to ensure children’s participation, learning, belonging, and access to coordinated support. Hippotherapy is a supplementary interdisciplinary intervention that may support physical, psychological, communicative, and social functioning. As this field is developing in the Republic of Kazakhstan, appropriate professional preparation is increasingly relevant. The purpose of the study was to develop and conduct an exploratory evaluation of a hippotherapy training programme for students of educational psychology. The empirical study included an educational intervention, thematic testing, observation, and assessment of an open case-based task. The participants were 42 third-year students at Zhetysu University named after I. Zhansugurov. The programme was delivered as an elective course. The mean final course score was 86.44 ± 6.17, corresponding to an average ECTS grade of B. Course-based assessments addressed subject-specific, communicative, organisational, advisory, and research domains. Students who completed intermediate knowledge checks obtained a higher mean final score than those who did not complete such checks (88.9 ± 3.1 versus 82 ± 2.8; p ≤ 0.05). Students receiving more field-based practical instruction also obtained descriptively higher open-task and motivation scores than students receiving primarily video-based practical instruction, although the difference in open-task scores did not reach statistical significance. The findings provide preliminary information about student performance within one elective course.