The PIPER Model in time-out classrooms: A pilot project in Austria

With the closure of special schools in Austria, increasing numbers of students with special educational needs (SEN) are being integrated into mainstream schools. Soon after arriving in the regular school system, many of these students are placed in ‘time out’ classes. The original purpose of ‘time out’ classes was to provide regular students with support for temporary problems and to prepare them for a successful return to their classrooms. Mixing the student populations integrating from special schools with students who have temporary problems in fully participating in their regular mainstream school classrooms has resulted in two contending issues: Firstly, there is an extensive range of needs for the classteacher in the ‘time-out’ class to understand and meet. Secondly, students who previously would have been motivated to return to their regular classes appear to prefer to remain in the ‘time-out’ class, which, with a ‘stable’ population of special needs students, provides an ‘alternative’ classroom rather than a ‘time-out’ classroom. Our project aims at helping students in ‘time-out’ classes to return to regular classes with the help of the PIPER model (Piper, 2017). The PIPER Model - Personalised Interventions Promoting Emotional Resilience, is a training programme for teachers that aims at enhancing self-regulating and self-control competencies of students, who are “extremely challenging” in the school context (Piper, 2017).