This 12 month project from Kay Zastrow and Peggy Simonis from the Green Bay Area Public Schools was published by the Institute for Learning Partnership / University of Wisconsin.

Zastrow & Simonis (2005)

Type of report: Independent research project, descriptive non-experimental pre-/post-test

 Summary: This article looked at effects of Conscious Discipline (CD) on acts of physical aggression in Head Start (2 classrooms) in the Green Bay Area Public Schools as well as child care (3 classrooms). Over the course of 5 months, the authors (local teachers) trained participating classroom teachers on the CD program, providing modeling and support. Physical aggression was measured pre-and post-training through independent observations at three time points in a day. Instances of different types of aggression such as grabbing, kicking, hitting, pushing, and throwing were recorded.

Evidence/Findings: In both the child care and Head start classrooms, at post-test there were fewer instances of physical aggression in child care classrooms occurred than at pre-test. There was more variability however, in results from Head Start classrooms. From pre- to post-test, there was a large decrease in the frequency of grabbing and small decreases in hitting, pushing, and throwing, which already had low numbers of instances observed at pre-test. There were no observed instances of kicking at either pre- or post-test in Head Start classrooms.