Martine van der Pluijm

118 Chapter 4 by-step approach that includes all parents regardless of their backgrounds. Recent research underlines the importance of tailoring SFPs to the needs of lower-educated parents (Boonk, Gijselaers, Ritzen, & Brand-Gruwel, 2018; De La Rie, 2018; Manz et al., 2010; Van Steensel et al., 2012). Especially schools with large numbers of lower-educated parents could increase their efforts to develop SFPs in support of child language development. However, the right conditions that acknowledge the professional autonomy of teachers must be in place. Consequently, we recommend inviting teachers as co-researchers in a process that is closely related to their practice and based on collective learning (cf., Epstein et al., 2019;VanVeen et al., 2012).This active engagement of teachers in joint research activities requires limited numbers of participants to allow building trust and relationships between group members and process leaders. Process leaders should be carefully selected. Process leaders should preferably be experts in the field of parental involvement and language education, which is needed to adapt to the specific barriers that teachers can experience in practice. Additionally, process leaders need to be well-trained for professionalizing teachers based on inquiry. This expertise is crucial to stimulate teachers to find solutions by continued cycles of testing and reflecting that are needed to develop new customized behavior (cf., Walker, 2019). Teachers should create opportunities to support high-quality verbal parent-child interactions. Introducing the use of decontextualized language could further improve children’s oral language and literacy development (Rowe, 2012; Snow, 1991; Van Kleeck, 2008; Weizman & Snow, 2001). Teachers need substantial and specific capabilities to fulfill a role in child language learning, both in the classroom and together with diverse groups of parents (Michel & Kuiken, 2014). Dedicated training to work with parents and collaborative support of child language development are prerequisites. Better preparation of teachers for this role together with parents can be rewarding and contribute to teacher satisfaction about their work in diverse contexts. In conclusion, policymakers could stimulate schools to develop adaptive SFPs in support of child language development. They can facilitate schools to establish a school policy and employ professionalization programs that provide intensive forms of reflective learning and community networks that build upon teachers’ professionalism (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2002). In addition, pre-service teacher education should include more substantial knowledge and practical training to facilitate candidates building SFPs. This policy can encourage schools and pre-service education to prioritize investigating children’s HLEs and stimulate candidates and teachers to build reciprocal relationships with parents. Conducting introductory interviews (Lusse et al., 2019), preferably in the home environment of pupils, can contribute to this aim. All these investments can contribute to positive feelings of teachers towards parental involvement.