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Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

7-2015

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Early Childhood Special Education Studies: M.S.

Department

Child and Family Studies

College

School of Education

First Advisor

JoAnn Johnson

Second Advisor

Marc Markell

Third Advisor

Glen Palm

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the effectiveness of using the Pyramid Model to teach social/emotional skills to preschoolers in an inclusive classroom. As a result of teaching effective social/emotional skills, the incidents of challenging behaviors would decrease. The researcher used quantitative data by using the pre-intervention and post-intervention scores on the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-Social Emotional. These scores were collected in an intervention classroom and control classroom of similar make-up and design. In addition, the researcher used a teacher questionnaire completed by teachers in the intervention classroom, to obtain qualitative data regarding the perspective of the teacher and how that might influence the effectiveness of the Pyramid Model. The results of this study indicated that a number of variables affected the results of the ASQ-SE scores including the experience of the teaching staff, the teamwork within the teaching team, and the use of intentional and systematic teaching. The greater experience of the teachers in the control classroom resulted in a larger overall improvement of ASQ-SE scores. The intentional teaching and use of the Pyramid Model teaching techniques resulted in a more significant change in those students who were exhibiting challenging behaviors. Further research without the differences in teaching experience is needed to further study the effectiveness of the teaching strategies of the Pyramid Model.

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