THE BASE SYSTEM: A SCHOOL-WIDE POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT TOOL TO FACILITATE EVIDENCE-BASED DIGITAL INTERVENTION PRACTICES

The Positive Behaviour Intervention and Support system is a framework aimed to introduce a change at school-wide level. It promotes a disciplinary system change process, from a reactive punishment- based strategies of specific student misbehaviours to a proactive system, where different behavioural principles such as the modelling and reinforcement of positive prosocial students’ behaviours are applied to improve school values and to create a positive climate. This paper presents the Behavioural Assessment to improve School Environment (BASE) system and the BASE repository. The BASE system supports evidence-based digital intervention practices for stimulating the academic, social, emotional, and behavioural competencies of all students. The BASE repository is a collection of good practices, tools, and instructional contents. Both of the tools are able to support and facilitate, through the use of mobile devices and a web-based responsive system, different prevention and instructional practices at the three-tiers PBS model. At the first level of prevention (Tier 1) the system allows to the school PBS team to define the Expectation Matrix, a set of positive behaviours grouped according to predefined school values and locations. Moreover, the PBS team members are able to define the list of problem behaviours, classifying them in minor and major. The matrix and the list of minor and major problem behaviours are at the base of the development of a screening tool for identifying behavioural risk problems, the Positive Office Referral and the Office Disciplinary Referral tools. At the target prevention level (Tier 2) the BASE application provides the Check-in/Check-out (CICO) tool, as PBIS recommends. It is addressed to a targeted group of students, resulted unresponsive to the Tier I, and implements the practice of ‘Positive reinforcement contingent on meeting behavioural goals’ throughout a reward system. At the intensive prevention level (Tier 3) the system allows users to perform Functional Behaviour Assessment for students considered unresponsive to Tier I and II and to create customized measurement tools for designing single case studies. The measure can be assigned to the observers able to collect data and organize them in phases. A TAU analysis algorithm is applied to the gathered data for showing the effectiveness of intervention. In the BASE application, each student can access to the system with personal credentials and to visualize his significant progresses into a smart dashboard. The BASE repository represents a hub for digital resources collection concerning both theoretical and methodological aspects of the PBIS approach. The Internet users interested to know the European experience of the involved partner schools, and to enlarge their knowledge about the principles to implement the PBIS in their own school, can find a first set of multimedia contents, webinars, collection of good practices gathered during the lifespan of the European Erasmus+ BASE project. The repository facilitates the finding of high-quality contents and represents a learning corner and an important knowledge repository for teachers and health professionals to understand and apply this approach

THE BEHAVE APPLICATION: AN EVIDENCE-BASED TOOL TO MANAGE SOCIAL EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOURAL DIFFICULTIES

Social Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (SEBD) are a persistent and multiple manifestation of maladaptive behaviours which interfere with the students’ learning, social functioning and development and/or that of their peers. They may become apparent through withdrawn, passive, aggressive or self-injurious tendencies. The prevalence of these disorders is 2-16% of the general population. Children with SEBD, diagnosed or not, are likely to live in social isolation, to receive a poor education, and they risk becoming deviant teenagers, or unemployed adults. A way to approach SEBD with consistent level of educational success is to equip teachers with proper training on practical and proven classroom management strategies, but also with evidence-based tools that can help them to effectively control difficult behaviours with confidence and competence. This contribution presents the web-based BEHAVE application aimed to ease the way for teachers to apply behavioural evidence-based interventions at school. The paper describes the main features of the BEHAVE application: the definition of the behaviour to be observed, the creation and selection of appropriate measures, the collection of behavioural data, and the statistical analysis to evaluate the direction and the power of the effect of the carried-out intervention

FROM A COLLABORATIVE DESIGNING OF STORYTELLING TO A ROBOTIC AND VIRTUAL WORLD REPRESENTATION

This paper presents an experiential learning lab focused on building a digital storytelling using both robots with LEGO Mindstorms and virtual worlds with Kodu Game Lab. The experiential laboratory (32 hours) has involved 33 children of secondary schools in a collaborative learning setting in formal (school labs) and informal learning context (external cultural association). In a first phase of the activity children used Lego Mindstorm robotic kits, assembling them and creating a physical environment (pasterboard arenas) where robots were programmed for moving and taking actions. In a second phase children were invited to transfer the physical world built for robots in a new digital storytelling environment designed with Kodu Game Lab, a virtual world that allows to overcome the physical limits imposed by the previous environment. The study highlights as the combined application of robots building and virtual worlds programming helps students to work in groups and is effective to acquire the fundamentals of LEGO and KODU programming

Robotica e Mondi Virtuali: un’esperienza di Edutainment con LEGO ® Mindstorm e Kodu Game Lab

Un gruppo di studenti del primo anno della scuola secondaria di primo grado è stato coinvolto in uno studio di ricerca-azione volto ad esplorare le abilità cognitive coinvolte e stimolate dall’uso di tecnologie quali LEGO® Mindstorm e Kodu Game Lab (KGL). I risultati dello studio dimostrano che l’utilizzo di queste due tecnologie richiede, negli alunni coinvolti nel laboratorio, l’applicazione di processi cognitivi e competenze scolastiche differenti. Nello specifico, LEGO® Mindstorm sollecita maggiormente l’impiego di abilità di ragionamento logico-deduttivo, la capacità di elaborare velocemente target visivi, il problem solving geometrico, e la lettura e comprensione del testo-. L’uso di Kodu Game Lab coinvolge, invece, la memoria di lavoro visuo-spaziale, la capacità di aggiornamento delle informazioni e le abilità di lettura e comprensione del testo. Un confronto tra le prestazioni degli alunni coinvolti nel laboratorio e quelle di un gruppo di controllo, ha inoltre consentito di dimostrare che le attività svolte esercitano nei primi un incremento significativo delle abilità di memoria di lavoro visuo-spaziale

Robotic and Virtual World Programming Labs to Stimulate Reasoning and Visual-Spatial Abilities

The individuals’ cognitive skills, academic performance and their relationship with programming of robots or virtual learning environment is a topic of particular interest in the area of human-robot interaction. This paper presents a pilot study performed on a group of 36 lower secondary school students involved in a 32-hours laboratory based on the combination of LEGO Mindstorm NXT and Microsoft Kodu Game Lab (KGL) and aimed at programming first a robot and further a more complete virtual world based on a narrative-designed scenario. The findings of the research will be discussed in the light of the effectiveness of using robotics and virtual world programming as a meaningful and playful learning environment for improving cognition in children