Martine van der Pluijm

134 Chapter 5 encouraged to use more words (“ Yes, this is a sweater, it’s a black sweater with a hoodie, and it has white letters on the front.” ), and to express opinions or evaluate experiences (“ What sweaters do you like wearing?”, “Which’s your favorite?”, or “What did you like most this morning?” ) using decontextualized speech (Reese et al., 2010). Each step builds on the previous step by repeating the content and adding a new dimension (Wasik & Sparling, 2012). Teacher professionalization The professional development of teachers is central to the AHL program (see Chapter 4). Teachers were stimulated to develop their abilities by using situated learning activities that required them to develop solutions (Ericsson, 2006; Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; Kolb, 2014; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Walker & Legg, 2018) and that acknowledge their feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness (De Brabander & Martens, 2018; Deci & Ryan, 2000). Teachers received tools to work with the seven program steps. These tools could be used for adaptation to their classrooms (Naoom et al., 2012; Powell & Carey, 2012). Figure 4.3 in Chapter 4 summarizes the program content, tools, and professionalization activities. The professionalization activities involved teachers collectively (four workshops and six networks sessions) and individually (eight coaching sessions). Three experienced coaches, assisted by seven pedagogy students, were responsible for the professionalization activities. Teacher delivery Teachers were coached to deliver the intervention during weekly interactive parent-child activities. We examined teachers’ abilities to reliably convey the content of the program as intended in a separate study (see Chapter 4). The target was to organize 35 parent-child activities in a school year. Observations to establish insight in the quantity of delivery showed that all teachers arranged at least 35 parent-child activities (in some cases even 40), lasting between 20 and 25 minutes. We observed the quality of the delivery of AHL at the start and the end of the year. Most teachers showed adherence to all steps of the program. However, in three cases, teachers were not available for a longer period (due to burnout, maternity leave, and a broken arm), which influenced the quality of the delivery of the program during the parent- child activities. One teacher was able to continue her work, and the other two teachers were replaced. In these three cases, relationships between parents and teachers were more distant, and program delivery was unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, we decided to continue the activities with these new teachers and to follow the parents and children in their classrooms. We decided to compare the results for these three teachers (i.e., low-quality delivery) with the 11 others (i.e., satisfactory quality of delivery).