Creating Caring and Inclusive Communities and Supporting Social Emotional Learning: Implementing the Pyramid Model

Is your early childhood space created for each and every child and family? Do you collaborate with educators and work in the child's natural learning environment?

Building early childhood spaces with children and families in mind, is the beginning of creating a community where each and every child and family feel like they are valued, respected, and belong. The Pyramid Model for Promoting Social Emotional Competence in Infants and Young Children provides early childhood educators and early childhood intervention professionals with a framework of practices to promote the social, emotional, and behavioural development of each and every child. The Pyramid Model framework includes three levels; 1) universal practices that focus on building nurturing and responsive relationships and designing supportive environments; 2) targeted practices for supporting children’s social emotional competence; and 3) individualised practices for supporting children who have more significant social, emotional or behavioural needs. The Pyramid Model is grounded in equity, inclusion and belonging and is based on the assumption that all children can be successful in the classroom.

In this workshop, we will explore the guiding assumptions of the model, supporting research, and how to implement it. The focus will be on the strategies and practices that early childhood educators and ECI professionals can implement in early childhood classroom settings. The workshop will include opportunities for discussion about barriers and supports to implementation.

What is the Pyramid Model? (Hemmeter et al., 2021).

A framework of effective prevention, promotion, and intervention practices for supporting young children’s social emotional development and preventing challenging behaviour.
Designed to support all children and has been used in programs serving children from birth to age 6 in both centre and home-based settings.
Aligns with trauma-informed care and reflects a commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging.
Universal tier includes practices for creating and sustaining nurturing and responsive relationships with children, families, and colleagues. Also includes practices for designing responsive and nurturing environments to support children’s engagement, participation, and interactions with others.
Secondary tier involves providing increasing levels of support to meet the needs of all children. These practices are often tailored to individuals or small groups of children who need additional support even when the universal practices are in place to help them learn to communicate their emotions, interact with their peers, solve social problems, and respond to difficult emotions.
Third tier involves practices for supporting children who have more persistent social, emotional, or behavioural needs. These practices are designed in collaboration with families and other relevant professionals and work to ensure children can be successful in their typical daily activities, routines, and settings.
Teaching is tailored to the unique social and emotional needs of each and every child. Educators and supporting ECI professionals appreciate that small changes in how they support young children can make a big difference in how children grow and develop.

Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT) – supporting implementation

Adopting new approaches or practices can be difficult. Implementation of the Pyramid Model is most successful when there is a program-wide commitment to the core practices and the values and where there are systems in place such as coaching support and a way to measure progress. The TPOT is an important feature of the Pyramid Model work, providing a process for coaching and supporting early childhood educators and ECI practitioners to implement the practices with a high level of fidelity. In two large scale studies, Hemmeter and colleagues found that early childhood educators who received coaching in the classroom had higher TPOT scores than those who did not have coaching. Higher levels of fidelity were associated with more positive changes in children’s social emotional skills and less challenging behaviour.

Early educators consistently report the following related to using the Pyramid Model; (a) they are highly satisfied with the Pyramid Model supports, (b) the Pyramid Model changes the climate of their classroom; and (c) they report improvements in children’s social skills and reductions in challenging behaviour.

Dr. Mary Louise Hemmeter is a professor of Early Childhood Special Education at Vanderbilt University and holds the Nicholas Hobbs Chair in Special Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on effective instruction, supporting social emotional development and addressing challenging behaviour, and coaching teachers. Dr. Hemmeter conducts presentations and workshops throughout the US and abroad. She has directed numerous multi-site projects funded by the US Departments of Education and Health and Human Services.

Through her work on the National Center on the Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning and IES-funded research projects, she was involved in the development of the Pyramid Model for Supporting Social Emotional Competence in Young Children and the Practice Based Coaching Model. She is a co-author on the Connect4Learning Early Childhood Curriculum, the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool, and the Teaching Pyramid Infant-Toddler Observation Scale (TPITOS). She was co-editor of the Journal of Early Intervention and President of the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division for Early Childhood. She received the Merle B. Karnes Service to the Division Award and the Mary McEvoy Service to the Field Award.