The Pyramid Model is a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's social-emotional development, published by the National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations (NCPMI).
It works alongside a program's curriculum rather than replacing it — it is not itself a curriculum.
Its three tiers of support — universal, targeted and intensive — rest on a foundation of an effective workforce.
What is the Pyramid Model?
The Pyramid Model is a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's social-emotional development.
The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations (NCPMI) publishes it, and the name describes the shape: three tiers of support stacked on a foundation.
In the publisher's words, "The Pyramid Model works in conjunction with the program's curriculum, but is not a curriculum itself." That line is the one to remember as a teacher: a center that adopts the model keeps the curriculum it runs and adds the model's practices for social-emotional development alongside it.
If a posting or an interviewer names it, they are telling you which framework that program has adopted.
Conscious Discipline is another named framework you may run into; we compare the two at the bottom of this page.
And for where this skill sits in the job as a whole — duties, settings, requirements and pay — start with our daycare teacher career guide.
The Pyramid Model's three tiers
The model builds on a tiered public health approach: universal supports for all children to promote wellness, targeted services for children who need more support, and intensive services for children who need them.
- Universal supports — for all children. Nurturing, responsive relationships and high-quality environments.
- Targeted social-emotional supports — prevention. For children who need more support.
- Individualized intensive interventions. For the children who need them, at the top of the pyramid.
The tiers sit on something the framework names explicitly: a foundation of an effective workforce, with the systems and policies to support it.
That foundation includes you.
An effective workforce, backed by the systems and policies that support it, is what everything above stands on — which is why the training question in the next section matters as much as it does.
Classroom practices at each tier
The framework names its supports by tier.
At the universal tier, the practices are the two the framework names for all children: nurturing, responsive relationships and high-quality environments.
In the room, that is the standing work of the day — how you greet children, how you respond when a morning goes sideways, how the space is arranged so play and transitions run smoothly.
The targeted tier is social-emotional supports aimed at prevention, for children who need more support.
Our research recorded the tier and its purpose, not specific techniques — NCPMI's own materials are the source of record for what targeted supports look like in a classroom.
At the top, individualized intensive interventions serve the children who need them.
How a program staffs that tier — who plans the work and who delivers it — is a question worth asking any center that runs the model, and it tells you a lot about how the center supports its classrooms.
One thing does not change across the tiers: the Pyramid Model works alongside a program's curriculum and is not a curriculum itself, so none of it replaces the curriculum your center already runs.
Pyramid Model training and TPOT observations
The Pyramid Model's materials are published by NCPMI at challengingbehavior.org.
For a teacher, two practical questions follow from any framework like this: how staff get trained in it, and how a program checks that its classrooms are actually running it.
On training, our research could not verify Pyramid Model training formats, lengths or prices.
How a center trains its staff in the model is a question for that center — so ask it directly.
In an interview at a center that names the Pyramid Model, ask what training the center provides, who delivers it, and whether it happens on paid time; the answers tell you how the center supports any framework it adopts.
On checking, one name to know is the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool, or TPOT.
Our research could not retrieve NCPMI's TPOT pages, so we describe it only at the level we can support: it is a fidelity observation tool for Pyramid Model practices in preschool classrooms.
A fidelity observation, in general terms, means someone watches how practices actually show up in a room, rather than taking the program's word for it.
For a teacher, that framing matters: an observation like this looks at practice, not at vocabulary recall.
If your center schedules one, ask your director beforehand what it covers and how the results are used.
TPOT details were not verified
Pyramid Model vs Conscious Discipline
Both are named frameworks an early childhood program may adopt.
The Pyramid Model is a framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children's social-emotional development, laid out in three tiers on a workforce foundation, and it is not a curriculum — it works alongside whatever curriculum a program runs.
Conscious Discipline is an approach created by Dr. Becky Bailey.
Its publisher describes it as an evidence-based, trauma-informed approach built on four foundations: the Brain State Model, the Seven Powers for Adults, School Family cultivation and the Seven Skills of Discipline.
Note whose description that is — the program's methodology page, Conscious Discipline describing Conscious Discipline.
The structural difference for a teacher: the Pyramid Model is a tiered framework that works alongside a program's curriculum, while Conscious Discipline is one named approach with its own four foundations.
For neither framework did our research verify training formats or prices — each program's own site is the source of record.
Our Conscious Discipline guide covers that program.
When you browse daycare teacher jobs, notice which postings name a framework, and take the training questions from the section above with you.
Whichever approach a program has chosen, the interview move is the same: ask how deeply it runs.