Giuseppe Chiazzese

Background: Within Tier 1 School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), school-wide behavioral expectations are explicitly taught and monitored. Students’ judgments of the appropriateness of expected behaviors and their self-reported typical practice provide complementary perspectives, yet existing assessment tools do not directly pair these perspectives for the same expectations. We therefore developed the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports–Rules, Instruction, Safety, and Emotions (PBIS-RISE) questionnaire, comprising two parallel scales: Positive Behavioral Appropriateness (PBA) and Positive Behavioral Practice (PBP). Methods: Participants were 400 fourth- to eighth-grade students (aged 9–17 years) from 23 classes of two schools in Palermo (Italy) not implementing PBIS; classroom teachers rated each student's behavior. Each scale was reduced from 54 to 36 items (72 student-rated items overall) through item reduction in the same sample. Results: Confirmatory factor analyses supported a structure with nine behavioral expectations, three school-wide values, and a general factor, with acceptable fit for PBA (CFI = 0.956, TLI = 0.952, RMSEA = 0.046, SRMR = 0.052) and PBP (CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.054, SRMR = 0.048); the three values were very highly correlated ( r = 0.94–0.98), indicating a strong general factor. Subscale reliability ranged from ω = 0.66 to 0.87. Measurement invariance across gender was supported. Cross-form invariance between PBA and PBP was supported when tested with an ordinal procedure, although the joint model showed estimation problems. PBP scores correlated modestly with teacher ratings [ r = 0.23, 95% CI (0.13, 0.32)], to a similar extent as PBA scores. Conclusion: The findings provide initial psychometric evidence supporting the PBIS-RISE as a measure of students’ reported appraisal and practice of school-wide behavioral expectations. Because the item structure was derived and evaluated in the same sample from two schools not implementing PBIS, replication in independent samples and in PBIS schools, as well as evidence of sensitivity to intervention, are required before the instrument is used to evaluate Tier 1 instruction or to inform educational decisions.

This study reports the design, implementation, and descriptive evaluation of “Codici del Futuro”, a STEM-oriented education pathway developed by the Italian National Research Council (CNR) to promote students’ interest in science and awareness of research-related careers and addressed to local high school students. The programme involved 167 high school students organised in 10 groups and combined an orientation session with hands-on workshops delivered in CNR research facilities (chemistry, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, eXdended Reality/Augmented Reality (XR/AR), and game design). The chemistry workshop will be described as a case study. The study addresses two research questions: (RQ1) What group-level outcomes (participation, engagement, interest, behaviour) are observed across the multidisciplinary pathway? (RQ2) What post-activity satisfaction and short-term knowledge outcomes are observed in the chemistry workshop as an embedded case study? Group-level outcomes were assessed through a facilitator-based evaluation grid, using four single-item indicators rated on a 10-point scale and including field notes. The chemistry case study included an anonymous post-activity questionnaire (satisfaction, prior experience, and an eight-item knowledge test). Results documented high levels of engagement, interest, and appropriate behaviour across groups, whereas participation showed greater variability. In the chemistry case study, students reported high satisfaction and moderate post-activity knowledge scores, with differences across knowledge domains. Overall, findings provide descriptive evidence on student responses within a research-centre-based, multi-workshop STEM pathway.

This paper investigates the decisive role that social capital can play in positively regulating the educational environment and influencing some of the internal dynamics. To this end, the dimensions of trust, reciprocity and altruism, which come into play in the relational dynamics of the school community, were analysed as proxies for students' social capital. The study of these dimensions took place through the administration of a self-assessment questionnaire to pupils in two schools, located in two different socio-economic and cultural contexts, one urban and one suburban. The objective was to test the questionnaire proposed as a tool to measure certain value dimensions connected to the feeling of living in environments characterised by trust (TR), support and sustainment (HE), protection and safety (SA), autonomy and responsibility (RE), and the frequency of pro-social attitudes characterised by altruism towards others (AL), also taking into account the subjects' different living contexts.

Emotional intelligence (EI) and its meta-cognitive counterpart, meta-emotional intelligence (MEI), have increasingly been recognized as key factors in helping students understand, regulate, and reflect on their emotional experiences. MEI expands upon EI by incorporating meta-cognitive beliefs and awareness about one’s own emotional functioning, thereby influencing both emotional regulation and positive behavioral choices. This study examined the relationship between MEI and the knowledge of positive behavioral rules among 198 students aged 9 to 12. Participants completed the IE-ACCME-B, which assesses meta-emotional beliefs, emotional self-conceptualization, and emotional abilities, along with the PBIS-KGVE, a tool developed ad hoc to measure knowledge, generalization, and value-based understanding of school rules. Findings highlight that almost all considered variables are intercorrelated, with meta-emotional beliefs being the best predictor of the students’ knowledge, generalization, and value-based interpretation of behavioral rules. These results suggest the opportunity to establish interventions focused on meta-emotional beliefs to enhance behavioral rule knowledge and foster prosocial development within educational contexts.

Augmented Reality in education can support students in a wide range of cognitive tasks–fostering understanding, remembering, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating learning-relevant information more easily. It can help keep up engagement, and it can render learning more fun. Within the framework of a multi-year investigation encompassing primary and secondary schools across Europe, the ARETE project developed several Augmented Reality applications, providing tools for user interaction and data collection in the education sector. The project developed innovative AR learning technology and methodology, validating these in four comprehensive pilot studies, in total involving more than 2,900 students and teachers. Each pilot made use of a different Augmented Reality application covering specific subjects (English literacy skills, Mathematics and Geography, Positive Behaviour, plus, additionally, an Augmented Reality authoring tool applied in a wide range of subjects). In this paper, we introduce the datasets collected during the pilots, describe how the data enabled the validation of the technology, and how the approach chosen could enhance existing augmented reality applications in data exploration and modelling.

For the first time, augmented reality is introduced into a behaviour lesson according to the framework of positive behaviour intervention and support (PBIS) and the first interaction data between the user and the teaching resources are investigated. The xAPI statements reflect the actions that commonly compose a behavioural lesson; that is, teach, practice, and reinforce. With a specially developed application to access AR behavioural learning content, the student is able to perform actions within the three phases of a lesson. The xAPIs make it possible to monitor users in action within their learning activity. This work introduces the use of xAPIs in the new context of monitoring interactions with augmented reality objects used for behavioural teaching.

This chapter reflects the research conducted for the development of Augmented Reality (AR) interactive components for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) involving the development of an AR mobile app from the basic principles to the software prototype. The research lays the foundations for introducing AR into a new teaching and learning context based on the teaching of behavior according to the PBIS framework. PBIS is a preventative approach for decreasing problem behavior and improving the instruction of expected behaviours, organization of consequence systems, redesign of environmental settings, and use of evidence-based practices. The main aim of this chapter is to introduce the PBIS–AR mobile app and provide an overview of the development process integrating AR with the requirements of PBIS practice. After a short reference to PBIS, the concept underlying the development of the PBIS–AR app is presented. The concept is based on the definition of a new theoretical paradigm that integrates AR and behavioural learning creating an augmented space that we have called Augmented Reality Behavioral Learning Space (AR–BLS). The chapter further introduces the structure of the behavioural lessons, designed to instruct learners according to the school behavioral values, and presents the PBIS–AR app architecture as a component of the AR PBIS ecosystem. It illustrates the different components of this ecosystem together with the AR solutions adopted.