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.