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.