[Portugal, first session May 4-6, 2020] Support for the homework

Welcome to the Portuguese team!
The new topic of the forum “Support for the homework” is designed to provide the teachers an individualized support to define, together, the next steps for implementing the case study inside the Behave application.
This with the aim to arrive in Belgium for the next and last training course well equipped and trained.
In particular, this path will be supervised and monitored by me and my colleague Federica Compagno, because both of us are psychologists specialized in cognitive-behavioural therapy and consequently in charge to support you during the important phases of data collection (selection of the more suitable measure to adopt) and definition of the intervention plan that will be carried out with the support of the BEHAVE application.
During this first step we ask you to:
Identify ONE student (case) that in your shared opinion needs intervention - as soon as possible - because his/her behaviour is highly frequent, intense and has had a long duration in the last months.
Describe using this topic, in an operational way the case, following the structure of the case data suggested in the Behave app:

Student id
Sex
Year of birth
Behaviour to be observed
Description
Place
Setting

The DEADLINE to complete this first step is March 10, 2020

Keep in touch!
Antonella Chifari

Dear portuguese team,
I would like to rememrber you that yesterday was the deadline to send us the description of your case study.
Please, let us know if you have difficulties, we are at your disposal for any issues.
Regards,
Antonella e Federica

Dear portuguese team,
we post here the description of your first case and we try to give you some specific feedback.

Name of student: Emanuel (5.ºdegree)
Sex: male
Year of Birth: 2008
Behaviour to be observed: non-fulfilment of tasks
Description: The student is not concentrated, sometimes he turns to his colleagues and has parallel conversations, he does not fulfil the activities proposed by the teacher during the class.
Setting - Lack of attention, lack of understanding of activities to perform

The behaviors that you want to measure, could be grouped under a more general label "off task behavior" (verbal, motor or passive) during independent work. You could work on this general category (off-task) by marking "yes" to the extent whenever he does anything other than performing the assigned task (e.g. talk to classmates)
You could start doing the baseline measurement with a direct observation. We suggest you to make 30-minute observations in total, with 5-minute intervals, using the partial interval methodology. If you have any difficulties in setting up the measurements on the app we will give you the necessary support.
Besides, we would like to specify that is fundamental identifying what triggers the problem behavior and what management methods are currently being implemented to manage it (i.e how teachers reacting as a consequence of the problematic child behaviour). With the aim to obtain these information it is important to make a functional analysis (it means doing ABCs of behavior): remember that it would be important to have at least 4 ABCs.

We remain at your disposal for any type of support you need.
Regards,
Antonella and Federica

Dear teachers,
below we report the description of the case chosen by your group, and we try to give you some useful advises about the procedure to carry out.

Name of student: Diogo (6.º degree)
Sex: male
Year of Birth: 2008
Behaviour to be observed:
Conversations with colleagues/not sitting correctly
Description: Challenge of teacher authority and lack of focus on content and activities to develop in class.

Setting - Previous situations that existed in the interval or lack of interest in activities or content

Firstly, the description of this second case appears a little bit confusing due to the fact that are mentioned a lot of different behaviors. So, we have not understrand very well what is the TARGET behaviour: the problem behavior is that the child talks with his classmates, or ... he sits incorrectly, or .. he challenges the teacher's authority or that he has little attention? Consider that when your attention is contemporarly focused on many behaviors, it is very difficult to chose how to intervene on them, at the same time.
Furthermore, it is probable that these behaviors do not have the same function and, if you remember, the interventions are not programmed based on the topography of the behavior but on their function.
The first advice is therefore to select one, maximum two behaviors, on which to apply the measure chosen and, subsequently, the intervention.
Secondly, it would be appropriate to provide an operationalized description of the chosen behaviors: some behaviors are instead defined with labels that do not make it clear what to measure (e.g. challenge of teacher authority or lack of focus on content).
Among all the reported behaviors, those that have been best operationalized are: "conversations with colleagues" and "not sitting correctly".
We suggest you to work on these two behaviors or choose only one of them. You could start doing the baseline measurement with a direct observation; remember that at least 4 observations are needed. Then, we suggest you to take a frequency measurement for the behavior "not sitting correctly": 30-minute observations in total with 5-minute intervals, using the partial interval methodology.
Finally, we suggest you to take a duration measurement for the behavior "conversations with colleagues": 1 hour observation time in total each time.
If you have difficulty setting the measurements on the app we are available to support you.

Regards,
Antonella and Federica