Promoting Positive Development in Early Childhood: Building Blocks for a Successful Start

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.

Dr. Karen VanderVen has been involved with child and youth work for over 40 years. Following a number of years’ direct experience working with young children, youth, parents, and families in preschools, residential and group programs, and community mental health, she joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, where she is now Professor of Psychology in Education in the program in Applied Developmental Psychology. Her interests include program design and intervention design science; play; early childhood curriculum; professionalization of early childhood and child and youth work; nonlinear dynamical systems theory applied to developmental issues; and life span and intergenerational issues.
Dr. VanderVen has served as Senior Visiting Fellow at Search Institute, developing its Early Childhood Developmental Assets Framework as well as contributing to other projects; and as a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, focusing on child and youth development. She was a co-founder of FICE-North America (the International Federation of Educative Communities).
In the early childhood field, her activities, in addition to her direct work, have included serving as elected Secretary of the National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators, making numerous national presentations at both the National Conference and Institute for Professional Development Conferences of the National Association for the Education of Young Children; working as a Mental Health Consultant for Head Start program; consulting to early childhood programs; conducting numerous trainings for early childhood staff; and serving on the boards of early childhood programs. She is a Certified Pennsylvania Pathways Early Childhood Trainer.
Dr. VanderVen is the author of well over 200 professional publications, including books (e.g., Home, School and Community Influences on Young Children), monographs, invited chapters, articles, and columns on a wide variety of early childhood and child care topics. Her early childhood writings have appeared in works published by Columbia University Teachers’ College Press, Elsevier, Garland Publishers and the National Association for the Education of Young Children, among others. A recent early childhood publication is ＂Beyond Fun and Games Towards a Meaningful Theory of Play: Can a Hermeneutic Perspective Contribute?＂ In Social contexts of early education and reconceptualizing play. S. Reifel and M. Brown (Eds.), Elsevier, 2004.
Her Internet column on various child-care issues ＂From the Soapbox＂ has appeared monthly on CYC-Net. She served as Editor of The Journal of Child and Youth Care Work, currently is an Associate Editor of the Child and Youth Care Forum, which publishes early childhood articles, and is on the Editorial Board of five other journals. A member of the Academy of Child and Youth Care Workers, Dr. VanderVen has received distinguished service awards from the Association for Child and Youth Care Practice, the National Organization of Child Care Worker Associations, and the Albert E. Trieschman Center. She is cited in the recent History of Early Childhood Education, by C.V. Lascarides and B. Hinitz (Falmer).