May 3, 2022

Spotlight: Holly Schindler strives to support equity in early childhood policies and practices

Dr. Holly Schindler strives for equitable programs and systems of education for children and families in all areas of her career. Her passion for early childhood emerged early on and led to her sustained focus on early childhood policies and practices through community-based research.

Schindler is both the chair and an associate professor of learning sciences & human development in the University of Washington College of Education. In this role, she teaches numerous courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. One of her favorite undergraduate classes to lead is an early childhood policy class for early childhood majors, which is often students’ first exposure to these concepts. The class offers students the opportunity to learn about key policy issues that impact children and families, as the class focuses dually on education and issues such as parental leave policies and economic policies.

Schindler also teaches a graduate seminar on early childhood innovations and research practice and policy. The content shifts as key critical issues in the field evolve, and students work in groups throughout the course to research and develop an innovation pitch in response to a set of challenges they are given relating to works they read for the class.

“The goal is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of students to think about key issues that are happening right now in early childhood from these different lenses of research practice and policy with equity being a driving factor in the readings we do,” said Schindler. “Part of what I’ve loved about that class is that it’s an opportunity for students across the College of Education and other areas of campus to come together from different angles and think about potential solutions and directions for the field to go.”

Schindler’s varied population health-related research involvements are motivated by her passion for working with fathers as an important source of support in the family unit for child development. She strives to combine her interests in fathers and parenting with her interest in early childhood policy and practice through these projects.

“One of the areas close to my heart within this broader umbrella of families, parenting, and supporting children is working with fathers and thinking about how programs and policies can be more inclusive of family members as a whole,” explained Schindler. “My work has focused specifically on fathers as one piece of the family that plays an important role but are sometimes excluded from family services and policies that support kids and families.”

Schindler recently worked with Children’s Home Society of Washington on a project that created strengths-based coaching videos with fathers to support their interactions with their young children. Children’s Home Society of Washington had preexisting home visiting programs, so Schindler and her team focused specifically on fathers whose families were already enrolled in these programs. They created a pilot program that worked with a diverse group of fathers and ultimately adapted their strengths-based coaching video model to specifically serve Mexican American fathers in their ability to serve as a support for their children and families.

Currently, Schindler is working on another project in this realm funded through the Administration for Children and Families that analyzes preexisting data from a nationally representative sample of families served by Early Head Start, which is a federally-funded program that offers home visits or center-based care for young children and families. Schindler is looking at this data to create portraits of fathers within these families based on different demographic factors.

“We’re asking ourselves the questions: Who are these fathers of the families who are currently enrolled in Early Head Start, and how are they intersecting with the services currently being provided? And, in what ways might home visiting programs and center-based care expand or change their ways of interacting with dads to better include them within the services?” explained Schindler.

Another initiative in which Schindler has engaged is Best Starts for Kids, an early childhood initiative in King County. The initiative recently had 13 funded organizations aiming to develop, implement and adapt innovations specific to early childhood needs in King County communities. Schindler worked in collaboration with Best Starts for Kids and Children’s Home Society of Washington to offer technical assistance within these organizations and contribute to their multiple innovations.

“It’s been a really rewarding project in the way I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the community organizations to think about community-driven research in new and different ways,” said Schindler. “It’s important to think about how we can support the health and well-being of families in King County from a place that matters to the communities.”

From educating college students, to participating in community-based research, to serving as a member of the Population Health Initiative executive council, Schindler’s career reflects her continued passion for promoting equity in marginalized communities through early childhood policies and practices.