Martine van der Pluijm

124 Chapter 5 ABSTRACT Despite the well-documented need for effective interventions to enhance young children’s oral language development tailored to the characteristics of lower-educated parents, there is little research that addresses this specific target group. We conducted two multiple case studies that review the results of the school-based program At Home in Language. This program establishes school-family partnerships, defined as intentional collaborations between teachers and parents, to stimulate lower-educated parents to contribute to the oral language development of their young children (3-8 years). The first study investigated parental perceptions of these school-family partnerships and the quantity of home language activities conducted by parents and children. The results showed an increase in the frequency of home language activities reported by the lowest educated parents. The second study examined the quality of parent- child interaction during classroom activities. The results showed improvements in the quality and the quantity of these interactions, in particular for dyads that participated in classrooms with a high quality of delivery by teachers. Practical implications are discussed of how school- family partnerships with lower-educated parents can be implemented so that these parents can contribute to their young children’s oral language development.