Optimizing the developmental opportunities for all pupils is a major social concern. More collaboration between educational and youth care professionals in schools, as a preventive approach to prevent more serious problems, is recommended. This is important because of the difficulties teachers experience in handling students’ difficult behavior. In the Netherlands many students make use of youth aid and/or attend special education schools, due to their behavioral problems. However, interprofessional collaboration is difficult to realize. A systemic change, called ‘Passend onderwijs’ (a change towards inclusive education) was introduced in 2014 in the Netherlands, and evaluated in 2020. The evaluation shows that collaboration between education and youth services can create alignment issues (Ledoux & Waslander, 2020). It requires professionals to step beyond the boundaries of their own profession, and to implement daily educational practices, based on shared responsibility and shared expertise (Van Swet, 2017). Collaboration is "working with others to do things that you cannot do by yourself" (Sennett, 2012).  

Although teachers generally feel competent in dealing with problematic student behavior, dealing with externalizing behavior evokes feelings of inadequacy (De Boer, 2020). Youth care professionals are insufficiently involved in questions regarding preventing problem behavior, encouraging positive behavior, and promoting well-being in the classroom. Research shows that working together on prevention strategies contributes to student well-being (Splett et al., 2020). In our study we developed several prevention strategies as tools for schools to make youth services accessible to all students. Providing a safe school environment and promoting wellbeing is important for all students to prevent behavioral problems (Lester & Cross, 2015). 

In this research project it is examined how to support students’ social emotional learning by providing an integrated preventive approach which was developed by both teachers and youth workers, and implemented in the classroom. Teachers and youth workers collaborated in the classroom, they actually worked together. The participating schools in this project are special education schools, regular primary and secondary schools, with their respective youth care partners. This gives us three school types: Special education (SP), regular primary education (PE), and regular secondary education (SE). We present the findings of our questionnaire study among students and teachers (see Table 1) who filled in a questionnaire at the beginning of the project (2019), and after two years of implementation (2021).   

The research questions are: 

1) What is the contribution of the intervention to students' social-emotional learning? 

2) In what ways and to what extent is the cooperation between education and youth welfare services strengthened during the project?  

3) What competencies do teachers develop through the collaboration with youth care providers? 

The findings suggest that the interventions in each school practice foster students’ social emotional learning and lead to an increased sense of wellbeing. Also, teachers learn to better manage complex behavioral situations in the classroom by collaborating with youth care professionals. Finally, the teachers and youth care workers work better together, due to an increased interdependency and flexibility. They need each other to achieve goals, and they learn to explore the boundaries of their own profession. 

The research was positioned in the aforementioned three practices (school types). Researchers and education and youth care professionals formed multidisciplinary research teams. The study examined if, and how students’ social emotional learning is supported through the provision of a preventive approach at classroom level. This paper presentation presents the results of the evaluation line. The evaluation line examined the effects of the jointly designed and implemented interventions. These included effects 1) on students' well-being, 2) on teachers' pedagogical competencies, and 3) on professionals' interdisciplinary collaboration. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was conducted among all students and teachers who participated in the study. Instruments: The standardized COOL questionnaire (Peetsma et al.,2001) was used to measure students’ social-emotional learning. The Interprofessional Team Collaboration in Expanded School Mental Health scale (Mellin, et al., 2013), which is based on Bronstein's collaboration model, was used to measure collaboration between teachers and youth care professionals. We developed a self-assessment instrument to measure teacher competencies, based on teachers’ pedagogical competence standards (Onderwijscoöperatie, 2016) and youth care professionals’ 'interprofessional collaboration' standards (Van Alten, et al., 2017). Three primary schools (with groups of students aged 8 - 11 years, n =520 ), two secondary and vocational schools (with groups of students aged 12 - 18 years, n= 321),and two special schools (with groups of students aged 8 -16 years, n = 124), participated in the study. The first measurement of the questionnaire study was conducted in spring 2019, in the summer of 2021. A few respondents from each group filled in the questionnaires in 2019 and 2021 (See Table 1 “both 2019 and 2021”). We used these data, and post hoc tests and ANOVA to calculate the significant differences between school types and groups.

The research project was conducted between 2019 and 2021, partly during the Covid-19 period. A comparison between the results of the questionnaire study in 2019 and 2021, shows an increase in students' well-being with teachers and with their classmates, and an increased cognitive self-confidence compared with the situation in 2019. This effect is particularly evident in elementary education. In special and secondary education, scores are generally stable. Still, these findings are interesting, considering that student well-being during the corona crisis tend to show a negative trend (Achterberg et al., 2021). Also, elementary school teachers improved their pedagogical competencies, after a period of more intensive collaboration. Teachers learn to better manage complex behavioral situations in the classroom by collaborating with youth care professionals. Finally, the teachers and youth care workers work better together, due to an increased interdependency and flexibility. They need each other to achieve goals, and they learn to explore the boundaries of their own profession (Haasen et al., 2022). This study confirms previous research: when there is actual collaboration, professionals learn a lot from each other and show a more positive attitude towards interprofessional collaboration (Doornenbal, 2017; Doornenbal et al., 2017; Alhanachi et al., 2021). Overall, we found few changes in teachers' competencies between 2019 and 2021. From the start of the study, teachers considered themselves as quite competent already in dealing with students. Collaboration between teachers and youth care workers in the classroom has a positive impact on their wellbeing and collaboration competences, and on students' wellbeing.

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