Research & Evaluation Reports
- California Collaborative on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning: Professional Development Evaluation Report (PDF)
- UCLA Evaluation of Teaching Pyramid Professional Development: Highlights and Recommendations (PDF)
The Teaching Pyramid Approach provides a systematic framework that incorporates positive behavior support through promoting social-emotional development, providing support for children’s appropriate behavior, preventing challenging behavior, and addressing problematic behavior. Between January 2010 and June 2011 WestEd San Marcos delivered training and technical assistance on the Teaching Pyramid approach to five districts and one charter school in six School Readiness sites in Los Angeles County. Following the completion of the training, the evaluation team designed and carried out six case studies highlighting the successes and challenges experienced by the sites as they began implementing the Teaching Pyramid approach.
The case studies included data from pre- and post-training surveys assessing teachers’ and administrators’ knowledge and effectiveness in promoting healthy social-emotional development and addressing children’s challenging behavior, focus groups with teachers, and phone interviews with key informants. At the time of data collection sites were in the very early stages of implementation.
Cross site-analysis indicated that the implementation of the Teaching Pyramid had an impact on teachers, children, and administrators. For many teachers and administrators the Teaching Pyramid training and technical assistance produced a paradigm shift as they came to understand that healthy social-emotional development is as crucial to academic success as are pre-literacy skills, and that social emotional skills can be taught in the classroom.
