Martine van der Pluijm

114 Chapter 4 who reported no satisfaction and participated less in the professionalization activities, told the researcher: “ Yes, I’ll continue. I hope I’ll have more opportunities in the new school year. Not just to do this better, but other things too. It didn’t work so well this year due to (personal) circumstances . " Teacher 1 explained: “ Yes, this must go on, that is my opinion, with more school policy (to involve parents). And I really don’t understand why this didn’t happen in our school before." Some teachers had already involved their colleagues and were continuing their approach with parents. When asked whether she would continue to work with AHL, Teacher 3 replied: “Absolutely. And I really see that my colleagues want to do the same.” DISCUSSION The aim of this study is to investigate whether the AHL program contributes to teachers’ professional development to build SFPs with lower-educated parents and improve young children’s oral language development. Regarding our first research question (i.e., Do teachers adhere to the seven AHL steps?), nine of the 14 teachers reported that they had followed all seven steps. Three teachers reported they had adhered to six steps, but were unable to implement Step 7 [Expand children’s language]. Two teachers, who participated only partially in the professionalization activities due to personal circumstances, reported that they had adhered to three steps (1, 2, and 6). With respect to our second research question (Does teachers’ adherence improve from pretest to posttest, and is there a difference in gain for parents with different educational levels?). Our analyses show a significant improvement in teachers’ adherence to six of the seven steps. However, we found no improvements in teachers’ insight in the HLE, one of the two aspects of Step 1 and no significant interaction for education level on change in teachers’ insight in parental skills and the HLE, and their ability to build reciprocal relationships with the parents in their classrooms. However, we did find significant lower overall rates of teachers’ self-reported insight in the HLE for parents at education level 1 (primary education as highest level), in contrast to parents at levels 2 and 3 (secondary education until the age of 15 and higher). We found the same results for Step 3 [ Build reciprocal relationships ]. Furthermore, teachers succeeded in involving more parents in parent-child activities when comparing posttest to pretest. We found the least improvement for the two teachers who did not fully participate in the activities. We now present our findings related to our third research question (To what extent do teachers perceive that the use of the seven AHL steps contributes to their personal goals as a teacher and to the sustained use of AHL?). The results indicate that all teachers were intrinsically motivated to work with parents while following the seven steps of the program. They reported the program contributed to their goals and gave them the freedom to tailor their work to the needs