Martine van der Pluijm

13 General introduction Since the regulations to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers have discovered parents as the first educators of their children worldwide. During the lockdown, teachers were involved at a distance, and parents took over the education of their children, following the school curriculum. On television and in the newspapers, we heard how schools were using remote learning, distance education, and online learning to continue child education, assisted by parents at home. However, many children have parents that are not capable of supporting their children adequately due to less knowledge, low language proficiency, or a lack of resources. Schools, educators, and other parties are worried about the delays of child development that have arisen during these months of education at home. Interestingly, research has emphasized the impact of parents as first educators for the development of young children for decades. This is not because of their possible roles as educators of the school curriculum but because of the decisive impact of informal relationships between parents and children at home for child development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977; 1992). However, it has also shown significant differences in the richness of these home environments for child learning. One prominent explaining factor is parental education level. Currently, these differences between families based on socioeconomic factors have become more apparent as many parents have taken on the role as the first teachers of schoolwork at home. This situation seems to have raised renewed awareness of the social influence of the home environment for child learning. Meanwhile, teachers are struggling with parent engagement and are trying to find ways to connect the home and school environment to improve child development. Recognizing the home environment with its informal nature as the most important setting for child learning can create new opportunities for teachers to enhance their language education of young children (Crosnoe et al., 2010). This education that integrates the home and school setting can be most significant when teachers develop their abilities to reach out to families with the fewest resources. The relevance of this research This thesis aims to contribute to a better understanding of how teachers can establish meaningful connections between the school and home setting of particularly lower-educated parents in support of young children´s language development. Oral language development of young children deserves our attention as it is a key factor in language and literacy development (Sénéchal & Lefevre, 2002; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002; Verhoeven & Van Leeuwe, 2008). Already in early childhood, children differ significantly in their language acquisition, as can be seen in variations of vocabulary sizes (e.g., Ariaga, Fenson, Cronan, & Pethick, 1998; Hoff, 2006; Kuiken et al., 2005). Exposing young children to rich oral language contributes to later literacy development (Rowe, 2012; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001). For that reason,