Martine van der Pluijm

127 How to support lower-educated parents? together with occupation and income indicators. Poverty and unemployment are prevalent problems that might lead to stress and that need to be accounted for by intervention research (Linver, Brooks-Gun, & Kohen, 2002; Roberts, Jurgens, & Burchinal, 2005). However, reports of parental education levels are often lacking (Haring Biel et al., 2020; Van der Pluijm et al., 2019). Besides, researchers tend to define ‘lower-education’ as high school level and less, categories that do not admit interpretation of effects differentiated for the lowest educated (i.e., maximum of primary education), lower educated (i.e., lower secondary education) or middle educated (i.e., higher secondary education) parents (Van der Pluijm et al., 2019), whereas parents at the lowest end of education are likely to face the most substantial barriers providing a rich HLE for their children. Interventions and research should take into account these parents’ lack of schooling that may be inhibiting their roles in the HLE. Implementation of these interventions is complex due to the interaction of various characteristics that require the professional abilities of teachers to use specific delivery modes (Powell & Carey, 2012; De la Rie, Van Steensel, & Van Gelderen, 2016). Many lower educated parents (compared to higher-educated parents) differ in their knowledge and beliefs about activities that trigger language development (Aarts, Demir-Vegter, Kurvers, & Henrichs, 2016; Rowe et al., 2016; Scheele, 2010). These beliefs may lead to different role perceptions of parenting, compared to what schools expect from parents (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005). In particular, the lowest educated parents may have had the most negative experiences in their educational careers and weak beliefs of self-efficacy for supporting their child’s development that may negatively affect their parental role (Fitzgerald, Spiegel, & Cunningham, 1991; Neuman, Hagedorn, Celano, & Daly, 1995; Walker, Wilkins, Dallaire, Sandler, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2005). One more limitation that intervention research should consider is parental literacy. These skills may be very low, or parents may be illiterate (Boyce, Innocenti, Rogman, Jump Norman, & Ortiz, 2010; Malin, Cabrera & Rowe, 2014; Reder, Vanek, & Spruck-Wrigley, 2011; Reese, Leyva, Sparks, & Grolnick, 2010). Despite the relevance of parental literacy skills for parental support of their children’s language development (Bynner & Parsons, 2006; Haden, Reese, & Fivush 1996; Neuman, 1996; Sénéchal, 1997), literacy levels are scarcely reported (Manz et al., 2010; Van der Pluijm et al., 2019). Interventionists should specifically account for the parents with a migrant background, who may have considerably lower education levels compared to parents born in the host country (Allemano, 2013; Anderson, McTavish, & Kim, 2017; Beacco, Lyttle, & Hedges, 2014; Wasik & Van Horn, 2012). These parents may also have difficulty speaking and understanding the majority language that may complicate their interactions with their children and their participation in interventions (Anderson et al., 2017; Scheele, 2010). In summary, increased attention of intervention research for the specific characteristics of lower-educated parents is urgently needed as this information enables researchers and practitioners to implement ecologically valid interventions that contribute to bridging language gaps of children.