BeHave Project - First classes in Palermo

Palermo, March 2019 - On February 11-13 and March 11-13 2019, Istituto Tolman hosted the first round of a series of five classes of the “BeHave Project” in Palermo, Italy. The course has been held by Nicola Lo Savio, Federica Compagno and Antonella Chifari.

Two different groups of teachers from several locations in Europe attended the two classes, gathered to inaugurate this three-year-journey they embarked upon together. Attending teachers came from Portugal, England, Belgium, Romania and Italy. All of them work with children, sometimes affected by behavioral difficulties and disruptive attitudes, best known as SEBD (social and emotional behavioral difficulties), that can negatively affect the school environment, and can cause social isolation, deviant teenager behaviors and grow up even as unemployed adults.

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These two three-days meetings aimed to transfer the fundamental paradigm and principle of behavioral science. In particular the targets of the first course can belong to three large areas: SEBD, Applied Behavior Analysis and Behavior assessment. Gianluca Merlo introduced the course and showed a preview of the "Behave" application, an adaptation of a previous application (WHAAM) that offers an ICT-based solution providing immediate and accurate help to the teachers.

Three expert psychotherapists (Antonella Chifari, Federica Compagno, Nicola Lo Savio) conducted these three-days training, sharing their knowledge, ideas and suggestions to improve the educators recognition in order to improve their management technique and influence on inappropriate behaviors.
After a first introduction on the trainers, the participants and the course, the focus of the discussion moved on the main topic, SEBDs, as the trainers gave the definition of the umbrella term and of the related characteristics.

Later on the trainers introduced the theoretical methodological framework, and specifically its paradigms and basic principles. The last part of the course was devoted to behavioral assessment: how to observe and measure behavior and how to conduct a functional analysis. At first, each topic was addressed from a theoretical point of view and then with hands-on exercises carried out bye each single participant or in small groups.

The final goal of these very first three-days training was to give the teachers a “new pair of glasses”, to facilitate them to see the interactions between pupil, teacher and surrounding environment from a different perspective; thus, giving them the skills to understand the reasons moving certain human behaviours in certain contexts and the tools to make a good assessment of this interaction in order to be able to change it and improve it.

We think this first BeHave encounter was a success. Teachers have had the opportunity to ask questions and confront any past doubts, to wonder and to share personal insights with all present. Furthermore, they were able to talk about their personal experiences with colleagues with different backgrounds, coming from different cultures, and compare their, sometimes different, points of view with their own.

Story written by Lucio Di Martino

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