Universal Screening to Improve Early Identification of Students at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Problems in the Post-COVID Era

Abstract

In the post-COVID era, there is an urgent need for institutions and educators to apply enhanced detection approaches for the early identification of subtle warning signs of students' emotional and behavioral concerns that may impede their learning. This need is considerably greater in those systems where school-based support provision for students in need is still at a rudimentary level of development, such as in the Greek system. Recently, there has been a shift in school-based support provision, from a focus on assessment of existing problems to a focus on prevention and early identification of subtle warning signs of students' emotional and behavioral concerns, which may impede their learning. However, such a shift certainly poses significant challenges for general, special educators and other professionals. In this paper, we examine some of the main obstacles that are likely to impede the early detection of learning, social, and emotional challenges among students in Greek primary schools. These barriers appear to be linked to the prevailing paradigm underlying school-based support, the practices used in educational institutions to identify students at risk of learning and psychosocial problems, and the role that teachers and school-related professionals play in identifying and addressing students' needs and difficulties.

Received: 5 July 2024 | Revised: 24 February 2025 | Accepted: 4 June 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Eleni Didaskalou: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - Original Draft, Funding acquisition. Amy M. Briesch: Writing - Review & Editing, Visualization, Project administration.