Promoting Positive Development in Early Childhood

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.

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 earlychildhood