Martine van der Pluijm

103 How can teachers build partnerships? Step 1 [Assess the HLE]: • Insight into parental educational levels and skills. Teachers were asked two questions and rated to what degree they gained insight in parental education level and literacy skills ( r = .58, at pre-test and .64, at posttest). • Insight into the HLE. Teachers were asked two questions and rated to what degree they had gained insight in the interactions and activities of the HLE of each child in their group ( r = .38, at pretest and r = .52, at posttest). Step 3 [Build reciprocal relationships with parents]. Teachers were asked three questions and rated if they could easily contact parents, if parents could easily contact teachers, and to what degree teachers collaborated with parents (Lusse, 2013) (average correlations of r = .60, at pretest and r = .64, at posttest). Questionnaires about teachers’ execution of the school-family program (Step 2) at pretest and posttest (subquestion 2) Teachers were asked to evaluate their experience in Step 2 [Teachers involve parents and colleagues in SFP procedures in support of child language development] . We measured two constructs on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (disagree very strongly) to 6 (agree strongly). 1. Teachers’ perception of their collaboration with colleagues when conducting parent procedures in support of child language development. Teachers were asked to rate their collaboration with colleagues during school-family procedures . Two questions were used for measurement ( r = .34, at pretest and r = .57 at posttest). 2. Teacher perception of their skills to conduct parent procedures adapted to lower- educated parents. Teachers were asked to rate their ability to adapt their school-family procedures to lower-educated parents . Two questions were used for measurement ( r = .77, at pretest and r = .55 at posttest). Observations of teachers’ behavior during parent-child activities at pretest and posttest (subquestion 2) We observed teachers’ adherence to the AHL steps during Step 4-7 at pretest and posttest. The observations were conducted by the first author and two professional coaches. One of the coaches had a bachelor’s degree in social work. The other had a master’s degree in psychology. Both were experienced in observing social work professionals. Two assistants were trained in coding the observations. A handout with the AHL outline, observation scheme, and examples were provided. The parent-child activities lasted an average of twenty-five minutes. Observations were coded using a modified coding scheme of the instrument of Lusse (2013). First, the numbers of parents and children participating in the activities were registered. We