Helping Children to Make the Best of their Transition to High School

2026-07-22

Poor social experiences with peers, such as peer rejection or peer victimization, and with teachers, such as receiving low support or having conflictual relations with teachers during elementary school impede children’s self- and stress-regulation. The affected self- and stress-regulation places these children at risk of developing similar troublesome relations with teachers and peers after the transition to high school. We propose to develop a serious game named A.L.I.B.I. to help children make a successful transition from elementary school to high school. In A.L.I.B.I. children play in a virtual high school environment. The objective of A.L.I.B.I. is to uncover an alien, who is disguised as a teacher or peer. By engaging in prosocial interactions with teachers and peers, by taking the perspective of others, by learning to overthink multiple response options before acting, and by valuing long term perspectives over short term goals, children will receive clues that will help them to uncover the alien. The advantage of A.L.I.B.I. is that through the use of a virtual school environment, it provides children a realistic yet safe environment to learn and rehearse prosocial behaviors, to prepare them for the new social environment. In addition, A.L.I.B.I. is intuitively attractive for children, through its use of game elements and presentation on a tablet computer. The proposed ERC PoC grant has the goal to (1) develop A.L.I.B.I. into a stand-alone serious game that will be ready for implementation, (2) to test the effectiveness of A.L.I.B.I., (3) to integrate A.L.I.B.I. in ongoing school transition trainings as provided by three school counseling organizations in three regions in The Netherlands, and (4) to develop a marketing strategy for broader Dutch and European implementation.

Netherlands

2026-02-15