Implementing a new social-emotional philosophy: The struggle in one head start classroom

The implementation of a social-emotional philosophy in any early childhood program plays out differently in every classroom. This study focused on the teaching team and children in a single Head Start classroom as they interacted with each other, with families, and with administrators, particularly in relation to the use of Conscious Discipline®, a newly adopted program-wide "social-emotional philosophy." Data sources for the study were classroom observation, informal conversations, interviews, and document analysis. This particular teaching team struggled with several factors-the demands of fitting Conscious Discipline to every child and to various classroom situations, questions or doubts from some parents, the apparent lack of response and incomplete communication from program administrators, discrepancies between the administrators' and teachers' views of the implementation and efficacy of Conscious Discipline, and the conflicting demands of addressing both academic and social-emotional outcomes.