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The SAGE Encyclopedia of
Contemporary Early Childhood
Education
Strengths-Based Education and Practices
Contributors: Mallary I. Swartz, Jessica Dym Bartlett & Elisa Vele-Tabaddor
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Contemporary Early Childhood Education
Chapter Title: "Strengths-Based Education and Practices"
Pub. Date: 2016
Access Date: September 11, 2016
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781483340357
Online ISBN: 9781483340333
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483340333.n392
Print pages: 1301-1304
©2016 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of
the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
Strengths-based education and practice (SBEP) is a conceptual perspective and approach
that promotes identification and appreciation of individual, group, and community interests,
goals, and strengths through active, collaborative partnerships. Professionals who implement
this approach assume that every individual, family, school, and community has power and
resources to resolve challenges, achieve goals, learn, and thrive. SBEP comprises a
supportive environment in which stakeholders have opportunities for reflective practice,
learning, relationship building, and assessment of both assets and challenges. This entry
provides an overview of the essential elements of SBEP as well as its historical context,
theoretical foundations, and applications to early childhood education (ECE) programs.
Overview
Positive relationships among children, teachers, and families based on trust, respect, and
collaboration are vital to successful SBEP in ECE programs. Within the context of such
relationships, there are opportunities for support and resources, the acquisition of new
perspectives, collaborative evaluation, and problem solving. Practices that support SBEP
include integrated teaching and learning approaches, reflective practice, cultural sensitivity,
and inclusion. Underlying these practices is the notion that people are active agents in
improving their own lives.
SBEP has the potential to benefit individuals, programs, and communities. For children,
SBEP facilitates positive identity development, social-emotional competence, physical and
mental health, creativity, and academic success. SBEP encourages children to recognize and
accept their strengths and limitations, empowers them to participate in their own learning,
validates their individual expression and roles in the community, encourages responsibility
and accountability, and promotes effective decision making.
SBEP empowers families to explore their children’s strengths, possibly altering their
understanding and expectations of their children. This shift in perspective has implications for
how families support, teach, and nurture their children. Professionals and schools that utilize
SBEP seek to reinforce families’ competencies, contributing to their sense of satisfaction,
importance, and well-being as parents—factors that support positive parent–child
relationships, parents’ capacity to resolve family conflicts, and parents’ role as children’s first
teachers. SBEP supports families’ motivation, participation, and decision making in their
children’s education.
SBEP is advantageous for ECE teachers, equipping them with skills to establish positive,
sensitive, and nurturing relationships with children and families, to individualize their teaching
methods, to implement curriculum in innovative ways, and to meet standards for high-quality
practice. Engagement in ongoing strengths-based reflective practice enhances teachers’
awareness of their own and others’ knowledge, skills, backgrounds, and biases.
Other individuals from schools and communities that contribute to children’s learning and
success may also use SBEP. A critical component of effective SBEP is the alignment of all
professionals in this approach, including ongoing collaboration, as an integrated system.
When professionals in the community use SBEP with each other, they foster alliances, form
common goals, and share information and resources. SBEP can facilitate community
engagement and promote a “collective impact approach” in education whereby teachers,
families, and community members align to celebrate individual and collective strengths, focus
on improvement and goal setting, and share accountability. A SBEP infrastructure is essential
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The SAGE Encyclopedia of Contemporary Early Childhood
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for continuous quality improvement of ECE.
Historical and Theoretical Underpinnings of SBEP
The underlying principles of SBEP in ECE stem from a number of mental health and social
service fields. Strengths-based practice first emerged in the field of social work as an
alternative to traditional, deficits-based practice, which focused on individual pathology. The
social work tenets of social justice, self-determinism, and empowerment underlie the most
basic principle of SBEP, namely, that every individual, family, group, and community has both
internal and external resources that can be mobilized to support healthy development, to
overcome adversity, and to achieve success in different life domains.
Whereas traditional notions of helping and educating others focused on problems with
individuals, a strengths-based approach envisions helping and educating as a process of
empowerment, in which the professional engages with individuals, groups, or families to
identify and enhance existing strengths. Strengths-based practitioners deliberately prioritize
the beliefs, values, and worldviews of individuals and families. This approach stands in stark
contrast to deficits-based models that position service providers as “experts” whose job it is to
identify problems and offer strategies for “fixing” them.
SBEP in education and social service models emerged in the early 20th century with Mary
Richmond and “friendly visitors” from the Charitable Organization Society, who held that
poverty was not a moral shortcoming; instead, problems in individuals, families, and
communities should be understood in the context of challenging social conditions.
Concurrently, the professionalization of helping, formalization of social work education and
training, and adaptation of “social diagnosis” from medicine helped consolidate and launch
SBEP, eventually leading to its integration in ECE.
The late 20th century ushered in several other frameworks and theories that helped to
popularize SBEP across fields of practice. In 1990, the Search Institute introduced
Developmental Assets—an identified set of skills, experiences, relationships, and behaviors
that enable children to develop into successful adults. Several years later, Dennis Saleeby
and colleagues at the University of Kansas codified a strengths-based approach in social
work. This approach emphasized that (a) every individual, group, family, and community has
strengths; (b) adversities can provide opportunities for growth; (c) people’s ambitions and
capacities for growth and change should be recognized and taken seriously; (d) individuals
are best served through collaboration; (e) all environments have resources; and (f) care is
essential to well-being.
Later that decade, the American Psychological Association began to promote positive
psychology as a field of scientific study, focusing on individual strengths. Simultaneously, the
field of positive youth development (PYD) also gained prominence, highlighting the capacity
of youth to make positive contributions to self, family, community, and society. In education,
whole child initiatives have underscored PYD, shifting from a narrow focus on academic
success to broader notions of positive child development.
The scientific study of resilience made substantial contributions to SBEP. Around 1970,
psychologists first began to conduct research on positive adaptation to adversity, or resilience,
observing children who were exposed to biological and psychosocial risks (e.g., parental
mental illness, poverty, trauma) and exhibited positive adaptation. Most experts have come to
understand resilience as a product of dynamic interactions among risk and protective
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Education
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processes operating at multiple levels (individual, family, community, societal) rather than as
an individual trait. Resilience research has informed how professionals identify risk and
protective factors and foster positive child development.
Last, SBEP in ECE has roots in special education and early intervention. Carl Dunst, Carol
Trivette, and Angela Deal have conducted important research on early intervention and on
family-centered practices, which emphasize families’ rights to make decisions on behalf of
their children and to be treated with respect.
SBEP in ECE
A number of ECE programs have implemented SBEP, but some programs are noteworthy. For
example, Head Start (HS), a dual-generation program supporting low-income children and
families initiated in the 1960s, advocated that parent involvement and support were
paramount to children’s success and school readiness. HS programs require SBEP in
ongoing assessment and inclusion of families from diverse backgrounds. In the 1990s, HS
began to make particular use of parent empowerment theories, viewing parents as partners
and as experts on their own children. More recently, technical assistance initiatives, such as
the Office of Head Start’s National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement,
highlight the importance of forming positive goal-oriented relationships with families.
HS and other ECE programs have implemented a number of formal SBEP initiatives as well,
including Strengthening Families, which emphasizes protective and promotive factors in
supporting parents as partners, providing knowledge of child development, and helping
parents develop social connections. Other SBEP approaches in ECE include Reggio Emilia
and HighScope, which seek to build on children’s own unique interests, skills, and strengths.
SBEP in ECE focuses on mutually supportive relationships with an emphasis on family
engagement—how programs engage families in the program—rather than solely on parent
education and participation in the program. This focus values parents’ expertise on their own
children and their self-efficacy in accomplishing their goals, rather than exclusively focusing
on their challenges. SBEP in ECE also stresses that every child and family has strengths,
skills, and capacities that can be utilized to help them achieve their goals.
Cultural competency among ECE professionals is another important component of SBEP,
including an appreciation for the unique traditions, practices, and worldviews of children and
families, and a recognition and respect for children’s individual rights, abilities, interests,
learning differences, and preferences for activities and routines. The National Association for
the Education of Young Children’s standards for professional preparation, for example,
highlight the importance of inclusion, respecting diversity, strong family and community
relationships, and respecting cultural variations in families’ values.
Strategies to Support Family Partnerships in ECE
Partnerships with families, based on trust, collaboration, and respect, characterize SBEP in
ECE. Ongoing and open two-way communication through everyday conversations, parent–
teacher conferences, daily journals, written notes, message boards, e-mails, home visits, and
participation in program activities are several methods that parents and teachers may use to
communicate about child and family strengths and to share family customs and traditions.
Parent–teacher partnerships also often involve collaborative assessment and goal setting for
children. Families provide critical information about their children and themselves supporting
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the review of data around child assessment and program improvement.
Strengths-Based Approaches to Curriculum and Assessment in ECE
A number of ECE approaches (e.g., Reggio Emilia and HighScope) encourage teachers to
use documentation (a) as a way to connect with families and illustrate children’s progress and
(b) as a vehicle for professional development in which teachers can share and reflect on their
work with one another. SBEP strategies to document, understand, and assess children’s
strengths and needs include portfolios of artwork or writing, videos, photographs,
observations and recorded anecdotes, and more formal assessments. For children with
special needs, programs often use individualized education programs to set goals and assess
children’s strengths, needs, and progress. Strengths-based assessment approaches focus on
the whole child and his or her unique capabilities. Gathering observations, data, and
anecdotes of children’s interactions with teachers, peers, and materials provides the
opportunity to document their distinct experiences, interests, and learning styles. Programs
can use this information to plan activities, transitions, and curriculum. Strengths-based
assessment also provides useful information to programs on how to build an environment
supportive of child, family, staff, and community strengths, creating a culture of respect, trust,
and appreciation.
Evaluating SBEP
Several tools exist to help programs evaluate their SBEP. Examples include Beth Green’s
Strengths-Based Practices Inventory, the National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse
Prevention’s Protective Factors Survey, and Search Institute’s Developmental Assets. These
measures focus on a program’s ability to empower children and families through supportive
relationships by building on existing characteristics, skills, and competencies, and by
recognizing resources in the community.
Conclusion
Given the capacity of SBEP to promote children’s early learning and development, as well as
family, program, and community strengths, it is not surprising that SBEP in ECE has become
more common. SBEP grows out of a rich tradition of celebrating diversity and strengths
across many fields of practice, including social work, resilience, positive psychology, and
PYD. Strengths-based ECE programs value relationships with families, cultural competency,
reflective practice, and individualized approaches to child assessment. Evaluation of SBEP is
relatively new, but several tools exist for helping ECE programs engage in quality
improvement around SBEP.
Mallary I. Swartz, Jessica Dym Bartlett, and Elisa Vele-Tabaddor
See also Family Partnerships; Family Strengths; Family-Centered Practices; Head Start;
HighScope; Observational Assessment; Reflective Practice; Reggio Emilia Approach;
Resilience in Adversity
Further Readings
Dunst, C. J., Trivette, C. M., & Deal, A. G. (1999). Supporting and strengthening families:
Methods, strategies, and outcomes. Northampton, MA: Brookline Books.
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The SAGE Encyclopedia of Contemporary Early Childhood
Education
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Goldstein, S., & Brooks, R. B. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of resilience in children (2nd ed.).
New York, NY: Springer.
Green, B., McAllister, C. L., & Tarte, J. M. (2004). The strengths-based practices inventory: A
tool for measuring strengths-based service delivery in early childhood and family support
programs. Families in Society, 85(3), 326–334.
Harper Brown, C. (2014). The strengthening families approach and protective factors
framework: Branching out and reaching deeper. Washington, DC: Center for the Study of
Social Policy.
Kania, J., & Kramer, M. (2013, January). Embracing emergence: How collective impact
addresses complexity. Stanford Social Innovation Review, pp. 1–7.
Roopnarine, J. L., & Johnson, J. E. (2005). Approaches to early childhood education (4th ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Saleeby, D. (2008). The strengths perspective in social work practice (5th ed.). New York, NY:
Allyn & Bacon.
Search Institute. (1990). Developmental assets. Retrieved from http://www.search-
institute.org/research/developmental-assets
Mallary I. SwartzJessica Dym BartlettElisa Vele-Tabaddor
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483340333.n392
10.4135/9781483340333.n392
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The SAGE Encyclopedia of Contemporary Early Childhood
Education
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