This new volume in the Search Institute Series on Developmentally Attentive Community and Society represents a milestone in Search Institute¿s signature work on the Developmental Assets that children and adolescents need in their lives to succeed. Through the research behind this book, Karen VanderVen links this strength-based, community-based approach to human development to early childhood development and practice. In doing so, she advances a lo- term vision of understanding child and adolescent development not merely as a series of discrete stages, but as a trajectory of development in which experiences in each phase of development link to, reinforce, or redirect experiences in other aspects of life. To be sure, VanderVen explores with both breadth and depth a parti- larly critical time in child development: the early childhood years, ages 3¿5. The latest research in numerous ?elds has only increased our understanding of how important it is for communities to attend to children¿s developmental expe- ences in these crucial years. Positive development in early childhood leads young people on a path to a healthy adulthood; and a lack of positive dev- opment in early childhood has a blunting effect that extends into elementary and secondary schooling years.

No other comprehensive approach like it in the field

The External Assets.- The Support Assets.- The Empowerment Assets.- The Boundaries-and-Expectations Assets.- The Constructive-Use-of-Time Assets.- The Internal Assets.- The Commitment-to-Learning Assets.- The Positive Values Assets.- The Social-Competencies Assets.- The Positive-Identity Assets.- The Conceptualization of the Early Childhood Developmental Assets Framework.- The Early Childhood Developmental Assets Framework as Intervention: Theoretical and Knowledge Base.- Emergent Perspectives on the Early Childhood Developmental Assets Framework.- Pathways Toward the Future and the Early Childhood Developmental Assets Framework.