A Scoping Literature Review of the Pyramid Model

Children in the early childhood years experience trauma at high rates. Trauma can impact children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and physical development, as well as their behavior in the classroom. Therefore, early childhood education professionals need to be prepared to support children through the use of trauma-informed care. The Pyramid Model is a framework for early childhood educators that promotes social-emotional competence and strives to prevent and address children’s challenging behavior that is used to train both pre-service and in-service early childhood teachers. Because of this, it is critical to understand the connections between the Pyramid Model and trauma-informed care. The initial aim of this scoping literature review was to synthesize the literature available on the Pyramid Model and trauma-informed care. However, due to limited research on the topics together, we had to expand our search to examine the range of research on the Pyramid Model and identify gaps in the literature and future directions related to trauma-informed care and the Pyramid Model.