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Teaching is a mentally and physically demanding profession that can be a source of stress and burnout. The COVID-19 pandemic put further pressure on teachers who had to face sudden challenges, such as online teaching and difficulties in holding students’ attention in virtual environments. Research has demonstrated that the negative effects of stress factors on teachers’ wellbeing can be modulated by coping strategies. This work explores the main sources of stress that jeopardized Italian teachers’ wellbeing after the COVID-19 pandemic and the coping strategies that they adopted. Eighty-six teachers, belonging to five school institutes located in Northern Italy, took part in three semi-structured group interviews, where their perceptions about wellbeing at school and occupational stress experiences were explored. Furthermore, they completed a survey with questions about recent stressful life events and the coping strategies that they had adopted in the last month. A thematic analysis revealed stressors related to four themes: adverse work conditions, a lack of support (from both school administrators and families), precariousness, and a demanding school system. A total of 22% of teachers experienced stressful events in the last month (e.g., health problems and loss), and 30% reported that they had adopted coping strategies, especially emotion-focused ones. The findings may drive educational policies to enhance protective factors for teachers’ professional wellbeing at school by reinforcing their individual resources and coping strategies, which can help them deal with challenging situations.

Obiettivo del presente articolo è individuare le caratteristiche della lettura dialogica che contribuiscono a promuovere lo sviluppo psicologico dei bambini sin dai primi anni di vita. Per fare ciò, viene presentato uno strumento che consente all'adulto di osservare il proprio stile di lettura, riconoscere eventuali comportamenti modificabili, affinché leggere ad alta voce con i bambini diventi per loro un'occasione preziosa di apprendimento e socializzazione emotiva.

Although children use social and emotional learning skills (SEL) across the world, the expression of these skills may vary across cultures and developmental levels. Such variability complicates the process of assessing SEL competencies with consequences for understanding differences in SEL skills and developing interventions. To address these challenges, the current study examined the measurement invariance of translated versions of a brief, multi-informant (Teacher, Parent, Student) measure of SEL skills developed in the US with data from six European countries (Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Romania; n = 10,602; 8,520; 6,611, for the SSIS SELb - Teacher, Parent, and Student versions, respectively). In addition to cross-country invariance testing, we conducted measurement invariance testing across ages (Primary and Secondary students) for the Teacher and Student forms of the measure. Results revealed a high degree of measurement invariance across countries (Scalar for the Teacher form and Partial Scalar for the Parent and Student form) and developmental levels (Scalar for the Teacher form and Partial Scalar for the Student form), supporting the use of translated versions of the SSIS SELb for international research across these countries and developmental levels. Implications are discussed for assessment and promoting children's SEL competencies globally.

Despite growing interest in evaluating the social and emotional learning of students and the development of standardized assessment tools for this purpose, there remains a dearth of validated instruments for evaluating teachers’ social and emotional skills. We set out to address this knowledge gap by investigating the psychometric characteristics of the Social-Emotional Competence Teacher Rating Scale (SECTRS) questionnaire, an instrument originally developed and validated in North America. Participants were 572 teachers from Italy (n=324), Latvia (n=139), and Portugal (n=109) ranging from 40 to 59 years of age. We performed confirmatory factor analysis procedures to validate a four-factor model measuring Teacher-student relationships, Emotion regulation, Social awareness, and Interpersonal relationships. The data supported this factorial structure, with a total of 14 items included in the final model. The outcomes of a multi-group comparison indicated that the model exhibited partial invariance, up to and including metric invariance, across the three cultural settings. We discuss these findings in relation to selecting appropriate instruments for assessing the social and emotional skills of teachers in different cultural contexts.

Introduction: Teachers' wellbeing plays a critical role in their overall job satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness in building supporting learning environments. In today's dynamic educational settings, where teachers often face numerous challenges and stressors, their wellbeing becomes increasingly vital. Consequently, there is an urgent need to innovate and develop targeted training interventions that can support specifically the wellbeing of educators. Methods: This study sought to provide an overview of the “Online Wellbeing Course - OWC,” a serious game developed to enhance teachers' wellbeing, and to investigate the participants' feedback after being engaged in the OWC, utilizing a qualitative approach through focus group discussions. A total of 189 in-service teachers took part in the study. To qualitatively explore their experiences with the OWC, participants were involved in focus groups and asked to provide feedback about how and to what extent the course was beneficial for their wellbeing. Results: Teachers reported enhancements in areas such as emotional competence, self-care strategies, social awareness, relationship skills, decision-making, and school climate. Discussion: These outcomes suggested the potential of serious games as an innovative training approach for supporting teachers' wellbeing, offering valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and educators.

There is compelling evidence that early school intervention programs enhance children’s development of life skills, with a positive knock-on effect on their behaviors and academic outcomes. To date, most universal interventions have displayed gains in children’s social-emotional competencies with a limited reduction in problem behaviors. This may depend on programs’ curricula focused to a greater extent on preschoolers’ social-emotional competencies rather than problem behaviors. Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) is a European, school-based, universal mental health program explicitly focused on both promoting students’ mental health and preventing negative conduct by adopting a whole-school approach. In this study, we set out to evaluate the effectiveness of the program for Italian and Portuguese preschoolers. We recruited 784 children (age range = 4–5 years), assigning them to either an experimental group (six months’ participation in the PROMEHS program under the guidance of their teachers, who had received ad hoc training) or a waiting list group (no intervention). We found that PROMEHS improved preschoolers’ social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, prosocial behavior, and academic outcomes. The more practical activities were carried out at school, the more children’s SEL competencies increased, and the more their internalizing and externalizing behaviors decreased. Furthermore, marginalized and disadvantaged children were those who benefited most from the program, displaying both greater improvements in SEL and more marked decreases in internalizing problems compared to the rest of the sample.

Basic aim of newly created PROMEHS curriculum is to strengthen socio-emotional well-being, resilience and mental health of students aged from 3 to 18 years. Starting from the whole-school approach, its task was also to have positive impact on teachers’ mental health what was explored in this study regarding PROMEHS implementation in Croatia and Romania. Based on the quasi-experimental design, data was collected during pre-and post-test phases of the PROMEHS curriculum implementation in experimental and control group, for both countries. The experimental group was engaged in PROMEHS education, i.e. 16 hours training, and control group was not. In-service teachers from preschool to secondary education from Croatia and Romania (N=97 in pre-test and N=97 in post-test; N=83 control and N=97 experimental group), completed the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy (short form), the Connor Davidson Resilience (CD 10), and the Social and Emotional Competence of Teachers (SECTRS). No significant differences were determined between those two groups in pre-test. However, after teachers’ training, experimental group of teachers showed statistically higher levels of their self-efficacy, resilience and socio-emotional competencies than control group. Since these significant differences have been found only in experimental and not control group between pre- and post-test, the determined differences could be attributed only to the PROMEHS training effect. Even though the burnout level was lower in experimental group than in control after teachers’ training, it was not determined as significant difference in the analysis. The findings are discussed within the frame of PROMEHS teachers’ training contribution and the need for its sustainability.

Introduction: Despite increasing interest in measuring social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a lack of European-validated tools for assessing the efficacy of SEL programs. The aim of this study was to validate an Italian version of the social skills improvement system (SSIS) SEL brief scales–student form. Methods: Participants were 1,175 students (mean age: 11.02 years; SD: 2.42; range: 8–16 years; males: 46.8%) recruited at schools in Northern Italy. Statistical analyses and results: Initial confirmatory factor analysis encountered a series of challenges, implying non-convergence of the original five-factor measurement model (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making) based on the Collaborative on Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) competency framework established with students in the United States. Further exploratory and confirmatory analyses supported a four-factor model that remained partially invariant across gender groups. The Italian version of the SSIS SEL brief scales was thus shown to be an efficient measurement tool for estimating social and emotional learning in students. Discussion: We discuss the implications of findings in relation to selecting valid and reliable instruments for assessing children’s and adolescents’ SEL competencies, while considering the culturally-situated nature of the constructs under study.

The well-being of teachers is a critical concern with significant implications for teaching effectiveness and student outcomes. However, there exists a notable gap in the literature concerning the well-being of pre-service teachers. Moreover, there is a scarcity of research focusing on the unique challenges faced by prospective special education teachers. This study addresses this dual gap by exploring the well-being of pre-service special education teachers and its relationship with self-efficacy and work commitment. Data was collected from a sample of 133 preservice teachers (mean age = 38,14; sd = 8.25 years) enrolled in a professional course for high school special education teachers. Employing cluster analysis, three distinct profiles based on mental health, perceived stress, and resilience z-scores were identified. We further explored how the identified well-being profiles related to self-efficacy and work engagement. The findings provide valuable insights on improving educational policies, personalized teacher training programs, and early support structures to nurture educators’ well-being and equip them with the skills necessary to navigate the complex landscape of special education.

Introduction: Research has highlighted the relevance of socio-emotional competence in buffering the harmful impacts of perceived stress on the psychological facets of the teaching profession. The purpose of this paper is to innovatively investigate the relationships between perceived stress, work engagement, and burnout in a single comprehensive model, when considering the potential role that socio-emotional competence plays in mitigating the adverse impact of perceived stress on burnout. Methods: A total of 276 Italian in-service teachers (mean age = 46.6 ± 9.9 years) completed quantitative self-report measures of perceived stress, socio-emotional competence, work engagement, and burnout. Data were analyzed by using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Results: All fit indexes supported the model's full acceptance and suggested that teachers' socio-emotional competence reduced the effect of perceived stress on the risk of burnout by increasing their level of work engagement. Discussion: The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of promoting interventions that target not only stress reduction but also foster teachers' socio-emotional competence in order to maintain a good level of work engagement and reduce the effect of stress on burnout.

In the last two years, a growing number of studies have focused on the promotion of students’ mental health to address the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, less studies have been conducted on sustaining teachers’ mental health which has been affected by the sudden changes in online teaching and the difficulties in keeping and building relationship with students. Even before the pandemic, teaching has long been recognised as one of the most challenging occupations characterized by high levels of stress. Although the research highlighted the key role of mental health promotion among teachers, there is still a lack of programs enhancing teachers’ wellbeing. This study examined the impact of the PROMEHS program, a school-based curriculum, on teachers’ mental health. A total of 687 teachers participated in the study. Applying a pre- and post-training study design with experimental and waiting list groups, teachers were evaluated in social and emotional learning, resilience, and self-efficacy. The results showed that there was a significant improvement in all competences of the teachers in the experimental group compared to those in the waiting list group. The paper discusses the implications of the findings with recommendations for further studies in the area.

Alexithymia refers to an ineffectiveness in identifying feelings and emotions and their communication. In adolescence, it has been identified as a significant predictor of emotional dysregulation, depression, anxiety, especially in girls, and it is generally associated with higher levels of physical and verbal aggression. We investigated the association between alexithymia and the tendency to engage in aggressive or prosocial behaviour in bullying situations and how this relationship may be affected by adolescents’ anxiety and resilience. A sample of 884 female adolescents (mean age = 16.2) completed three quantitative self-report measures of alexithymia, roles in bullying situations, and levels of anxiety and resilience. Three groups were created based on the alexithymia scores: high alexithymia, borderline, and no alexithymia. A multiple analysis of covariance was conducted to evaluate the associations among the variables. The MANCOVA showed that participants in the high-alexithymia group were less prone to adopt prosocial roles and more likely to play victim and outsider roles than those in the borderline and no-alexithymia groups. Furthermore, these results varied as a function of anxiety and resilience. Our study contributes in deepen the association between alexithymia and the tendency to act hostile, prosocial, or indifferent behaviours in emotionally charged situations in a particular developmental period when emotional regulation strategies, especially in girls, are put to the test. This could have important implications from the point of view of preventing the chronic development of antisocial behaviour as the preferred choice for dealing with emotionally stressing situations.

Alexithymic traits, which entail finding it difficult to recognize and describe one’s own emotions, are linked with poor trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and difficulties in identifying and managing stressors. There is evidence that alexithymia may have detrimental consequences for wellbeing and health, beginning in adolescence. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated the prevalence and incidence of alexithymia in teenage girls, testing the statistical power of TEI and student burnout to discriminate between high- and low-alexithymic subjects. A sample of 884 female high school students (mean age 16.2 years, age range 14–19) attending three Italian academic-track high schools (social sciences and humanities curriculum) completed self-report measures of alexithymia, school burnout, and TEI. Main descriptive statistics and correlational analysis preceded the discriminant analysis. The mean alexithymia scores suggest a high prevalence of alexithymia in female adolescents; as expected, this trait was negatively correlated with TEI and positively associated with school burnout. Participants with high vs. low alexithymia profiles were discriminated by a combination of TEI and burnout scores. High scores for the emotionality and self-control dimensions of TEI were strongly associated with membership of the low alexithymia group; high scores for the emotional exhaustion dimension of school burnout were indicative of membership of the high alexithymia group. These findings suggest crucial focuses for educational intervention: efforts to reduce the risk of emotional exhaustion and school burnout should especially concentrate on enhancing emotional awareness and self-control skills, both strongly associated with low levels of alexithymia.

Introduzione. Secondo l’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità, la salute mentale è parte integrante del concetto più ampio di salute e si riferisce ad uno stato di benessere nel quale una persona può realizzarsi, superare le tensioni della vita quotidiana, svolgere un lavoro produttivo e contribuire alla vita della propria comunità. La promozione della salute mentale di bambini e adolescenti, all’interno dei contesti educativi e scolastici, è da tempo indicata come prioritaria nell’agenda politica in Italia e nei contesti internazionali (Leschied et al., 2018). L’attuale situazione pandemica causata dal COVID-19 ha, inoltre, reso ancora più evidente la necessità di attuare interventi di supporto in risposta ai bisogni psicologici di studenti e docenti. Molteplici studi hanno, infatti, evidenziato come la pandemia stia avendo un impatto significativo sulla salute mentale di studenti e docenti. Alla luce di ciò, il presente contributo è finalizzato a presentare i risultati della sperimentazione del progetto PROMEHS Promoting Mental Health at Schools co-finanziato dalla Commissione Europea (2019-2022). L’obiettivo del progetto è la creazione, implementazione e valutazione di un curriculum scolastico universale e globale (Weare, 2015) per la promozione della salute mentale di studenti e docenti, dalla scuola dell’infanzia alla scuola secondaria di secondo grado. Il curriculum PROMEHS, che si propone di offrire un modello d’intervento evidence-based, è stato implementato in sei Stati Europei (Italia, Croazia, Grecia, Lettonia, Portogallo e Romania). Questo contributo presenta alcuni risultati della sperimentazione in Italia. Metodo. Il campione è costituito da 2358 studenti (50,6% femmine), provenienti dalla scuola dell’infanzia (31,7%), primaria (32,0%), secondaria di primo (24,6%) e secondo grado (11,6%). Lo studio ha previsto, inoltre, la partecipazione di 349 insegnanti (89,7% femmine). Per valutare l’efficacia del curriculum è stato impiegato un disegno di ricerca qu

We investigated early-childhood teachers’ emotion socialization practices via a multi-method study that combined self-report measures and structured observational situations at day care centre. Eighty-nine teachers (Mage = 38.29 years; SD = 11.06) completed two questionnaires about their emotion socialization style and beliefs about emotions, respectively. A subsample of 40 teachers also participated in two experimental situations designed for observing their responses to children’s emotional distress. We developed an innovative coding system for classifying teachers’ reactions in terms of focus (problem, emotion, solution, time) and style (coaching, dismissing, and amplifying, a new style we detected). All teachers deployed a variety of emotion socialization practices. Coaching reactions (especially emotion-focused) were the most frequent, followed by dismissing (problem- and emotion-focused responses) and, to a lesser extent, amplifying responses (mainly problem-focused). There were significant associations between the self-report scores and the responses observed in the experimental situations. We discuss the educational implications of these findings.

Preadolescence is a critical period for the onset of mental health issues. Thus, secondary schools have a responsibility to promote students’ mental health and prevent social, emotional, and behavioral problems. This contribution presents the results of PROMEHS, a European school-based, universal mental health program. Participants were 433 Italian students (11-13 years; 217 females), split into experimental and control groups. Teachers completed two questionnaires, at the beginning and end of 2020/21 school year: the Social Skills Improvement System, Social Emotional Learning Edition (SSIS-SELb), measuring their students’ social-emotional learning competences; and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), assessing students’ mental health (i.e., prosocial behaviors, internalizing and externalizing problems). Between the pre- and post-test phases, teachers in the experimental group were trained on school mental health themes and carried out PROMEHS activities in their classrooms. Multivariate analysis showed that students in the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in social-emotional learning competences (i.e., self-awareness and relationship skills; p=.04) and prosocial behaviors (p=<.001). Implications of these findings will be discussed.

As children and young people today face ever increasing social, emotional and mental health challenges, schools, as one of the primary systems in children’s lives, are called to broaden their agenda and help to address these challenges. This paper discusses the evaluation of a school-based, universal mental health promotion programme developed recently for the European context. The programme provides a universal curriculum from early years to high school, aiming to promote social and emotional learning and resilience and prevent social, emotional, and behavioural problems in children and adolescents. A total of 7,789 students (and their teachers and parents) from kindergarten to high school across 6 countries in Europe were recruited from 434 classrooms in 124 schools, making use of cluster sampling. A quasi-experimental longitudinal design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme on students’ outcomes by comparing the groups’ outcomes within times (pre-test vs. post-test) and between groups (experimental vs. control group). A total of 779 classroom teachers completed pre-and-post scales measuring students’ social and emotional learning, mental health and academic achievement. Results indicate that the experimental group had significantly larger increase in social and emotional competence and prosocial behaviour, and a decrease in mental health issues (externalising and internalising problems). No significant impact was found for academic outcomes. The findings are discussed in view of the limitations of the study and areas for further research.

The SSIS SEL Brief Scales (SSIS SELb) are multi-informant (teacher, parent, and student) measures that were developed to efficiently assess the SEL competencies of school-age youth in the United States. Recently, the SSIS SELb was translated into multiple languages for use in a multi-site study across six European countries (Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Romania). The purpose of the current study was to examine concurrent and predictive evidence for the SEL Composite scores from the translated versions of the SSIS SELb Scales. Results indicated that SSIS SELb Composite scores demonstrated expected positive concurrent and predictive relationships with scores from the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and negative relationships with scores from the problem behavior scales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Although there were a few exceptions, these patterns generally were consistent across informants (parents, teachers, and students) and samples providing initial validity evidence for the Composite score from the translated versions of the SSIS SELb Scales. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Objectives: The consequences of long-lasting restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have become a topical question in the latest research. The present study aims to analyze longitudinal changes in adolescents’ social emotional skills, resilience, and behavioral problems. Moreover, the study addresses the impact of adolescents’ social emotional learning on changes in their resilience and behavioral problems over the course of seven months of the pandemic. Methods: The Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2) measuring points were in October 2020 and May 2021, characterized by high mortality rates and strict restrictions in Europe. For all three countries combined, 512 questionnaires were answered by both adolescents (aged 11-13 and 14-16 years) and their parents. The SSIS-SEL and SDQ student self-report and parent forms were used to evaluate adolescents’ social emotional skills and behavioral problems. The CD-RISC-10 scale was administered to adolescents to measure their self-reported resilience. Several multilevel models were fitted to investigate the changes in adolescents’ social emotional skills, resilience, and behavioral problems, controlling for age and gender. Correlation analysis was carried out to investigate how changes in the adolescents’ social emotional skills were associated with changes in their resilience and mental health adjustment. Results: Comparing T1 and T2 evaluations, adolescents claim they have more behavioral problems, have less social emotional skills, and are less prosocial than perceived by their parents, and this result applies across all countries and age groups. Both informants agree that COVID-19 had a negative impact, reporting an increment in the mean internalizing and externalizing difficulties scores and reductions in social emotional skills, prosocial behavior, and resilience scores. However, these changes are not very conspicuous, and most of them are not significant. Correlation analysis shows that changes in adolescents’ social emo

Schools have been identified globally by policy makers as an ideal universal context to promote mental health for all students, to identify students with emerging mental health difficulties, and to target students with emotional and behavioral difficulties. However, studies on multi-informant perceptions of students’ social and emotional competences following the implementation of mental health programs at schools are limited. Current study examined teachers, students and parents’ perceptions of change in students’ social and emotional competences, following the implementation of a school-based intervention program Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS). PROMEHS goal was to provide a systematic framework for the development and implementation of an evidence-based universal mental health curriculum at schools, to increase students’, teachers’ and families’ mental health and to support teachers, school leaders and policy makers to integrate mental health promotion into national educational policies effectively. Hundred fifty-two Greek teachers from kindergarten to secondary schools completed the SSIS SEL Brief Scales – Teacher K-12 Form for their 1558 students’ social and emotional competences and 458 students completed the SSIS SEL Brief Scales – Student Form for their own social and emotional competences. In addition, 492 parents completed the SSIS SEL Brief Scales – Parent Form for their children. Teachers reported moderate changes for their students’ social and emotional competences, which were further confirmed by students’ reports, but not by parents. Findings are discussed in terms of plans of action based on multi-informant data.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process through which both students and teachers acquire and effectively apply the same social and emotional competences such as learning to understand and use emotions, set positive goals, establish, and maintain positive relationships and engage in responsible decision making. Most interventions to develop SEL at schools have focused exclusively on students, whereas there is a paucity of research examining teachers’ own social and emotional competences. Current study aimed to address changes in teachers’ and students’ perceptions of social and emotional skills following the Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) program, an intervention targeting both teachers’ and students’ social and emotional competences. Hundred fifty-two Greek teachers from kindergarten to secondary schools completed the Social and Emotional Competence for Teachers (SECTRS) for their social and emotional competences. Teachers also completed the SSIS SEL Brief Scales-Teacher K-12 Form for their 1558 students’ social and emotional competences. Finally, 458 students completed the SSIS SEL Brief Scales-Student Form for their social and emotional competences. Teachers reported moderate changes in their own social and emotional competences. They also reported moderate changes for their students’ social and emotional competences, which were further confirmed by students’ reports. Findings are discussed in terms of teacher training and professional development.

Il capitolo presenta una rassegna dei principali studi sullo sviluppo della teoria della mente (ToM), con particolare riguardo per i training studies. Inoltre, descrive una ricerca intervento condotta nei nidi per sostenere lo sviluppo della ToM.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social and emotional skills and resilience in explaining mental health in male and female adolescents, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three self-report questionnaires were administered to 778 participants aged between 11-16 years (mean age = 12.73 years; SD = 1.73) and recruited from 18 schools in Northern Italy. The SSIS-SELb-S and the CD-RISC 10 assessed social and emotional learning (SEL) and resilience skills respectively, while the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to measure mental health in terms of internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behavior. We found that SEL and resilience skills were positively and significantly associated with each other, negatively associated with internalizing and externalizing problems, and positively related to prosocial behavior. Three linear regression analyses showed the significant role of resilience, age, and gender in explaining the variance of internalizing problems; the significant role of SEL skills, resilience, age, and gender in explaining the variance of externalizing problems; and the role of SEL skills, age, and gender in explaining prosocial behavior. Importantly, we found that resilience fully mediated the relationship between SEL and internalizing problems, partially mediated the relationship between SEL and externalizing problems, and didn’t mediate the relationship between SEL and prosocial behavior. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study as well as its practical implications.

The school, as an educational system, is increasingly asked to teach students social and emotional skills that may facilitate their social success and well-being, and teachers are also expected to evaluate these competencies. Both of these goals (teaching and assessment) are mentioned in the Recommendation of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union of 18 December 2006 on key competencies for lifelong learning (European Union, 2006), and reiterated in 2018 in the New Recommendations (European Union, 2018). Although school principals and teachers are aware of these new tasks, in many instances they are not provided with appropriate methods to assess the achievement of these non-cognitive skills. Indeed, students have traditionally been assessed at school only for their knowledge and academic performance. The Learning to Be project, an Erasmus+ Key Action 3 project co-funded by the European Commission in 2017, aims to address this issue by developing and testing a set of tools and methods that would help teachers, as well as their students, recognise and assess social, emotional, and health-related skills. Since Learning to Be is a Key Action 3 project, it consists of a policy experimentation that aims to evaluate the effectiveness and scalability of innovative policy measures through large scale field trials based on robust methodologies. The collected evidence is then used to facilitate the transnational transferability of the innovative measures (European Commission, 2017).

Mental health problems amongst children and young people have been increasing over the past decades with a growing demand for schools to take preventive actions. This study describes PROMEHS, an Erasmus project co-funded by the European Commission (2019-2022) aimed at developing, implementing and evaluating a mental health curriculum in schools. PROMEHS places particular emphasis on the acquisition of those emotional, relational and civic competencies that sustain mental health promotion at school so as to address the needs of all children, including those from marginalized backgrounds, and contribute to their social inclusion as young adults in the society. The partnership consists of 20 research institutions, public authorities and scientific associations from 7 EU Countries. The experimental curriculum will be applied in 6 Countries. Using a repeated measures design, field trials will evaluate the curriculum’s impact on students’ academic and social behavior and achievement, and decreases in conduct problems and emotional distress. Additionally, PROMEHS aims to measure any improvements in teachers’ social and emotional competencies and mental health and wellbeing. The main project outputs include: training and instruction manuals for teachers, activity handbooks for students and guides for parents, with practical activities to support mental health promotion at school and at home. PROMEHS is aimed to provide a systematic framework for the development, implementation and evaluation of a universal mental health curriculum at school and to deliver high-quality training for school staff. Furthermore, it will serve to create a bridge between evidence-based school programs and educational Institutions, thus linking research, practice and policies.