Martine van der Pluijm

149 How to support lower-educated parents? instruments to determine the multifaceted problem of parental literacy skills related to child education (e.g., reading skills, familiarity with books, vocabulary, metalinguistic language) are lacking. Finally, more research is needed to identify which parent-child activities are effective in stimulating the lowest educated parents to interact with their child. Recent research reveals several effective activities, such as using prompting boards to elicit abstract talk (De la Rie, Van Steensel, Van Gelderen, & Severiens, 2020), talking about past events (Reese et al., 2010) or storytelling (Fekonja Pekla et al., 2010). Further research is required to enable researchers and practitioners to continue tailoring effective activities for the lowest educated target group. Implications for policy and practice Our research contributes to the knowledge of how SFPs can support teachers to collaborate with lower-educated parents. We have several recommendations for policymakers and school practice. Policymakers should stimulate teacher educators to strengthen curricula with knowledge about SFPs, especially those targeting lower-educated parents. Additionally, teachers should be coached to provide family literacy support and increase their awareness of how the HLE impacts young children’s opportunities to acquire language skills. However, this requires the provision of adequate working conditions for teachers, such as time and opportunities for collaboration. Teachers should be facilitated to accomplish their important role in the education of children from lower-educated families. Schools can improve their relationships with lower-educated parents, among which are many parents, who have little language proficiency in the majority language, lack knowledge of Western school systems and teachers’ expectations. Teachers can use activities, such as introductory interviews, to establish positive relationships with these parents at the start of the school year. This is an effective way of inviting parents to share their views and build reciprocal relationships (Lusse et al., 2019). Such actions can prevent a growing gap between teachers and parents (cf., Epstein, Jung, & Sheldon, 2019; Walker, 2019). In return, this effort makes teachers better understand parents and their children. Schools with high numbers of lower-educated parents can improve SFPs by providing parent-child activities as described in the above studies. Our research shows how parent-child activities can be tailored to the target group. Such activities can enrich lower-educated parents’ dialogues with their child and contribute to the quality of the parent-child interaction and the quantity of language activities at home.