BEHAVE: a tool to support the application of Functional Behavioural Difficulties in school setting

This contribution aims to present the BEHAVE application, a tool developed within the project BEHAVioural management model across Europe, funded by the ERASMUS+ - KA2 Strategic Partnership for school education. The main purpose of the project is to promote a transnational culture about some of the most effective strategies to early recognize and approach SEBDs (Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties) both in classroom and in the students' main life contexts. Long-term effects of improving teaching quality and foster learning opportunities of students are expected. The BEHAVE application, developed according to a so-called "agile methodology", is devoted to the generation of different measuring tools and to the collection of data of different nature from many contexts in a friendly and flexible way. One of the most useful techniques supported by the BEHAVE application is the procedure of functional assessment of behaviours in many neurodevelopmental syndromes such as ADHD, OPD, conduct and autism spectrum disorders, and other comorbid diseases. It allows users to gain data about specific behaviours both problematic and positive, to be modified or incremented in SEBD children, and to examine their contextual function according to an evidence informed behavioural assessment (Iwata et al., 1994; Horner, 1994; Haynes & O'Brien, 2000; Hurwits & Minshaw, 2012; Iwata, DeLeon, & Roscoe, 2013). Then, a function-based intervention can be planned and the caretakers (teachers, parents, health professionals, etc.) can quickly obtain the measure of the effect size of the intervention planned. The BEHAVE application, starting from the application of a Monte Carlo simulation, chooses the best algorithm to analyse the gathered data based on two different statistical indexes: TAU U (Parker, Vannest, Davis, & Sauber, 2011) and Allison and Gorman (1993). The most innovative feature of the BEHAVE application regards the opportunity of setting up different session-to-session measures to calculate the effect of the intervention: from direct systematic observation, to the descriptive type ABCs, until Likert scales, standardised questionnaires or rating scales that investigate behaviour and social functioning. In a future release, users will be able to decide to share the measures created by them with the BEHAVE community. Having a set of predefined measures could easy parents, teachers, and, more in general, child's caretakers in the assessment process, helping them to identify the significant behaviours and the drives that may power them.