Martine van der Pluijm

102 Chapter 4 Procedure Pretests were conducted in the first weeks of September 2014, just before the start of the implementation period. Teachers received questionnaires (pretest and posttest) and were requested to return these within two weeks. Two teachers were unable to do so due to a lack of time. Two students visited these teachers to fill in these questionnaires together. At the posttest, teachers were interviewed in June and July 2015 at the end of the implementation period. Teachers were informed about the aim, the duration (30 to 45 minutes), and the content of the interviews. Instruments Interviews at posttest The posttest interviews consisted of a brief description of the AHL program and three sets of questions related to our subquestions. An interviewer who was not involved in the program conducted the individual interviews: 1. Teachers’ reports of their adherence to the AHL program (subquestion 1) . Teachers were asked whether they had adhered to the seven AHL steps. Examples of questions included: “One of the first steps of the AHL program is to assess the HLE. Did you achieve this?” “Please describe how you used the AHL steps.”“What did you do to assess the HLE?” 2. Teachers’ perceptions of howAHL contributed to their goals and to improvements (subquestion 3). We used two themes. First, teachers evaluated their intrinsic motivation, their perceived autonomy, relatedness, competence, and overall satisfaction (Deci et al., 2001). An example of a question about autonomy is: “When working with parents, to what extent did you feel free to tailor the program to your needs?” Second, we evaluated their sustained use of AHL. Examples of questions included: “What effect do you feel your approach had on the parental role and the children’s development” and “Do you intend to continue using AHL in the future?” (Fishman & Krajcik, 2003). Class inventory lists to evaluate teachers’ assessment of the HLE and relationships (Steps 1 and 3) at pretest and posttest (subquestion 2) Teachers were asked how they had managed to adhere to Steps 1 and 3 with parents of each of the pupils in their classroom. Answers were rated on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 6 (agree strongly).