Martine van der Pluijm

100 Chapter 4 Teachers informed parents about the aims of the research and the activities and requested their consent. This was done in writing, with teachers giving the letter to parents personally and ascertaining that parents agreed to participate in this research. In total, 254 pupils and their parents were involved in the classrooms of these 14 teachers. Of these parents, 40% had attained primary education as their highest education level, 36% had completed secondary education until the age of 15 as their highest level, and 24% had finished secondary school at 16 or older. Based on interviews with a random sample of parents ( n =89 of the total group of 254 pupils, see Chapter 5), we established that the majority (86%) of parents had immigrant backgrounds (e.g., Moroccan, Turkish, Surinamese). Most parents were bilingual (73%). Other parents were monolingual in their minority (11%) or majority (16%) language. Program content Teachers were coached to work with parents using the seven AHL steps. They received an outline of the steps, the tools to work with the steps, and instructions on how the content could be adapted to their population. This was done to establish both intervention fidelity and customization (Naoom et al., 2012; Powell & Carey, 2012). Figure 4.3 summarizes the AHL program content. Three types of professionalization activities were adopted to involve teachers collectively (four workshops of 120 minutes and six networks sessions of 90 minutes) and individually (eight coaching sessions of approximately 45 minutes). Three experienced coaches led the professionalization activities, and social work students were involved to assist them. Teacher participation Teachers were invited to participate in each of the professionalization activities. Most teachers participated. Two teachers participated only a few times due to illness. One teacher was replaced by a colleague in May and June due to maternity leave. We decided to continue our research activities with these teachers and to observe their behavior with parents and children in their classrooms. Doing so, we collected data for all 14 teachers, as much as possible.