Martine van der Pluijm

156 Chapter 6 how teachers can develop skills to support parents, to strengthen links between school and home, and acquire the abilities to reliably convey the content of the program as intended. Therefore, we need to design an approach that improves teacher guidance in their work with children and parents in preschool, kindergarten and grades 1-2. Our main research question is: What approach can teachers of young children use to build partnerships with lower-educated parents in support of their young children’s language development ? Acknowledging the needs of both lower-educated parents and practitioners, we applied a design-based research (DBR) approach in close collaboration with the stakeholders involved (Kessels, 1999; McKenney & Reeves, 2012). We conducted four studies to answer the main research question. The first study reviewed extant research into activities and strategies that are successful in supporting lower-educated parents to promote their young children’s oral language development and the modes of delivery that are effective for the target population. We reviewed 28 studies directed at the effects of interventions for lower-educated parents on the oral language development of their young children (aged 3 to 8). In the second study, we designed a prototype of the At Home in Language (AHL) program containing a series of principles (partly derived from the review) to establish partnerships between school and lower-educated parents and to encourage rich parent-child interactions. In collaboration with teachers, principals, and parents we investigated what modifications of the prototype were needed to overcome the challenges when applying the design principles. Based on the results of the second study, we adjusted the prototype. In the third study, we implemented the adjusted AHL program in classrooms. We conducted a summative evaluation of the program directed at teachers’ abilities to adhere to the program principles and to adapt these to parents’ needs. In the fourth study, we conducted a summative evaluation to review the impact of AHL on lower- educated parents. We investigated the development of parental perceptions of their SFPs and their home language activities in a heterogeneous sample of ( n = 71) parents (lower and higher educated) in 14 classrooms of seven schools. In a sample of only lower-educated parents ( n = 19), we investigated the development of parent-child interactions during specifically designed parent-child activities in eight classrooms at four schools. In both cases we controlled for the quality of delivery of the program by teachers. MAIN FINDINGS In the first study (Chapter 2), we conducted a systematic literature review to identify which activities and strategies are successful in supporting lower-educated parents to promote their young children’s oral language development. Complementarily, we established which modes of delivery by teachers are effective for the target population. The central research questions