Martine van der Pluijm

131 How to support lower-educated parents? Study 2: 4. Does the AHL program lead to improvements from pretest to posttest of the following parent-child interaction characteristics of lower-educated parents and their children? a. Quality of the interaction (child involvement and parental responsive behavior) b. Quantity of speech (number of words of child and parent, amount of turn-taking) c. Quality of speech (amount of contextualized, decontextualized, relational, and procedural speech of parents and children) 5. Are there differences in improvement of the above parent-child interaction characteristics that can be attributed to differences in the quality of delivery by teachers in the classrooms? STUDY 1 METHOD Participants The study took place at seven primary schools from summer 2014 to summer 2015. We selected primary schools in disadvantaged areas with a high percentage of lower-educated families in the city of Rotterdam (Netherlands). Prioritizing the collaboration with lower-educated parents as a key activity for at least one year was an additional criterion for participation. We contacted teachers and school leaders that represented their school at conferences on SFPs. If schools were interested, we informed them about the objectives and conditions of our research. One of the requirements was that each school should appoint at least two preschool (pupils aged 3), two kindergarten (pupils aged 4 to 6) or two first grade (pupils aged 6 to 7) teachers. Teachers were requested to join the research activities for at least one year. Seven schools agreed with these requirements and were invited to participate. Four of the participating schools had participated in pilot research for the development of the AHL intervention (see Chapter 3). Four teachers in these schools had previous experience with AHL, and four teachers did not. The six teachers of the three new schools had no experience with AHL. In total, three preschool teachers, eight kindergarten teachers, and three grade 1 teachers were involved. The teachers were all dedicated to working with parents and were prepared to invest time. Most parents of children in these teachers’ classrooms were lower-educated: 40% had attained primary school as their highest level (i.e., very low), 36% had completed secondary education until the age of 15 as their highest level (i.e., low), and 24% had finished secondary school at 16 or older).