Parent and Community Assets as Sources of Young Children’s Learning Opportunities: Revised and Expanded

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Advances in our understanding of the experiences and opportunities that strengthen both parent and child competence and confidence is likely to occur when new approaches are used to promote child learning and development. The asset-based model of early childhood education developed, tested, and evaluated in the model-demonstration project described in this monograph represents one such approach.

The project’s approach to early childhood education differed from other model-demonstration projects by using parents’, caregivers’, and community members’ interests and abilities as the context of both informal and formal child-learning opportunities.
Program developers should find the monograph’s descriptions of asset-based model and approach to assessment and intervention helpful as a framework for conceptualizing and implementing a strengths-based approach to working with parents and their children. Practitioners should find the concrete examples of how aspects of the project were implemented instructive in their work with individual families to ensure their practices are asset-based. Program evaluators should also find the monograph informative, and especially program evaluators with limited resources to conduct more traditional evaluations of early childhood intervention and parenting programs.

Author: Carl J. Dunst
Published: 2008