Martine van der Pluijm

147 How to support lower-educated parents? The results of our second study confirm our expectations that teachers can play an important role in improving the quality of parent-child interactions in classroom contexts. We discuss three notable findings. First, we found a significant improvement of parent-child interactions in two activities with lower-educated parents. Children showed more involvement, and parents stimulated more autonomy and showed more emotional responsive behavior at the posttest. This is a valuable result as these aspects of parent-child interactions increase dyads’ joint attention, which is assumed to be beneficial for oral language development (Hoff, 2003; Tomasello & Farrar, 1986). Second, we found a difference between parent-child interactions in Activity 2 for dyads receiving a higher quality of delivery compared to those receiving a lower quality. Significant differences were found in aspects of interaction that are known to impact children’s language and literacy development: cognitive support (e.g., Landry et al., 2008), quantity of language (e.g., Hart & Risley, 1995), and quality of language (e.g., Curenton et al., 2008; Snow, 1991). Recent research emphasizes how the quality of delivery impacts the effectiveness of interventions (Powell & Carey, 2012; De la Rie et al., 2016). However, it is surprising that dyads receiving a lower quality of delivery performed worse in their interaction with children in Activity 2 in the posttest compared to the pretest. A possible explanation is that parents in the low delivery group were less motivated in the posttest sessions, because of a lack of attention to the activity in the intermediate period in the classroom. Researchers also observed that it was difficult to engage parents in this group in posttest activities. Third, we only found this difference for Activity 2 and not for Activity 1. How can we explain this difference? A possible explanation is that Activity 1 is less sensitive to instruction and coaching directed at turn-taking and having fun together than Activity 2. After all, many lower-educated parents might not be used to these forms of play that use scaffolding and turn-taking (see also Chapter 3). Therefore, possibly teachers’ explaining and modeling new strategies during Activity 2 and stimulating dyads to carry these out repeatedly is a more suitable condition for development in interacting in the Activity 2 than it is in Activity 1. Nevertheless, Activity 1 did result in improvements in aspects of interaction, such as child involvement and emotional support, even when teacher guidance was less intensive. Given the limited knowledge about the effectiveness of interventions that address SFPs that support the oral language development of children of lower-educated parents, our results are promising. Two ingredients of the AHL intervention seem to be important. First, parent-child activities might be a crucial mode of delivery to motivate parents to be actively involved during activities (Jacobs, 2004; Van der Pluijm et al., 2019). We observed how these shared experiences connect teachers, parents, and children and fostered shared beliefs and practices. Second, many steps have been taken to ensure the effective delivery of the AHL program, emphasizing the