Implementing Positive Behaviour Support in Early Childhood Education and Care

The success of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings as effective and inclusive learning environments depends on establishing a social and pedagogical context that promotes and suppor...

PBS-ECEC project’s main aim was to promote a whole school approach titled Programme-wide Positive Behaviour Support (PW-PBS) across Europe in ECEC. Within that framework, the project intended to address challenging behaviours from the early years of children’s education, by promoting their SEL, a crucial dimension for their overall development and well-being, in a socially inclusive environment. Such an accomplishment intended to have multiple benefits on children, early childhood educators and stakeholders. In addition, through the project results, preschool teachers would have the opportunity to strengthen their education and training. Specifically, PBS-ECEC was planned to design and examine the implementation of PW-PBS in ECEC settings, with specific emphasis on: training centre-based teams to deliver key elements of PW-PBS to the other professionals of the centres; producing educator training resources regarding the evidence-based practices to develop SEL and respond to challenging behaviour; and developing web-based spaces to disseminate project activities, as well as providing sustainable resources to be used in the future.

The success of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings as effective and inclusive learning environments depends on establishing a social and pedagogical context that promotes and supports positive educator-child relationships, child socioemotional competence, well-being and participation (e.g., Sugai & Horner, 2008). Several EU policy reports have proposed the need to develop European schoolwide frameworks that promote social inclusion and educational engagement. PBS-ECEC project aimed to respond to these needs by applying Positive Behaviour Support in ECEC, within a programme-wide approach, to promote children’s socioemotional learning (SEL) and to prevent behaviour challenges in four European countries: Portugal, Cyprus, Greece and Ireland. The programme-wide, or school-wide, positive behaviour approach (PW-PBS) is a research-based educational framework, with positive benefits for children's outcomes and school climate (Barrett et al. 2008; Hemmeter et al., 2018; Horner et al., 2005). The project PBS-ECEC represents a transnational collaboration of practitioners and researchers, sharing the common belief that promoting SEL has long-term benefits and is essential in preventing behavioural problems.

The Guide on Positive Behaviour Support in Early Childhood and Care in European Countries (Krousorati et al., 2023) provides useful information for ECEC teams on how to implement the first level – universal tier – of a whole school approach, titled Programme-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (PW-PBS), across early childhood education settings in Europe. The PBS-ECEC Guide proposes practices that support preschool educators to promote the social and emotional competence of all children and organize the ECEC environments in order to make them predictable, positive and safe for children. This Guide can be used by preschool professionals, preschool coaches who provide support to preschool educators, parents and other family members, and stakeholders in ECEC. It is available in English, Portuguese and Greek at the project website (https://pbs-ecec.eu/). A summary of the national studies that informed this Guide is also available: Transnational Need Assessment Report “Research findings for developing the Guide on Positive Behaviour Support in Early Childhood and Care” (Krousorati et al., 2022). The project website, available in English, Greek, and Portuguese, is paired with a Moodle platform (https://pbs-ecec.ese.ipp.pt/), to facilitate curriculum and workshop delivery for educators and stakeholders. The team structured the online course “Implementing Positive Behaviour Support in Early Childhood Education and Care” that includes five modules: (1) ECEC and socioemotional learning, (2) PBS theoretical framework, (3) Whole school program approach, (4) Practical tips on socioemotional learning and PBS support, and (5) Assessment and monitoring methods. The whole set of resources are also available for download in pdf format (Michaelidou et al., 2023). Results from the implementation of the PW-PBS with 54 trainers (the main person responsible at each centre for implementing the interventions) and 154 other professionals are available as a report (Report of the PBS-ECEC Impact Assessment Study and Practice Recommendations; Szproch et al., 2023). The team also organized shorter versions to facilitate its national use in Ireland (Szproch & O’Brien, 2023), Greece (Krousorati & Grammatikopoulos, 2023), Cyprus (Michaelidou et al., 2023) and Portugal (Oliveira et al., 2023), as well as a one-page Timeline and Description of the Activity and a one-page Recommendations Emerging from the Main Findings, available in the 3 project languages (please see https://pbs-ecec.eu/outputs/). Finally, the last resource developed was the Policy and Strategy Toolkit and recommendations for PBS in ECEC (Barros et al., 2023), available in English, Greek and Portuguese. This toolkit consists of a collection of lessons learned, promising practices with concrete examples, challenges, policy recommendations, and easy-to-use tools for professionals and policymakers to implement PW-PBS strategies. The Toolkit directly targets ECEC policymakers, educational leaders (organisation-level); pedagogical coordinators (school-level), preschool teachers (classroom-level) to make effective use of the recommendations and act accordingly. It is possible to read about each of the seven policy recommendations and its resources in the project website and to download the full PBS-ECEC Policy and Strategy Toolkit. The team also organized the PBS-ECEC Report on the Policy and Strategy Toolkit for Implementing a Program-Wide Positive Behaviour Support Approach in ECEC (Barros et al., 2023), focusing on the construction of the Policy and Strategy Toolkit. Besides these outputs, the project has been disseminated through several means, such as its website, press releases, scientific papers, presentations in Conferences, Facebook, Multiplier Events (see https://pbs-ecec.eu/category/news/).