Martine van der Pluijm

160 Chapter 6 of the HLE and spending time to build relationships with the lowest educated parents. Therefore, we argued that providing time and calmness are necessary conditions for teachers to establish understanding and trust with lower-educated parents in support of children’s language development. The fourth study (Chapter 5) evaluated the impact of the AHL program on parents’ perceptions and behavior. We conducted two multiple case studies. Study 1 investigated parents’ perceptions of their partnerships with teachers, their self-efficacy during language promotion at home, and the quantity of language and literacy activities conducted at home. This study was based on interviews with parents, with education levels ranging from very low to high, at seven primary schools (preschool, kindergarten, and grade 1). The research questions were: 1) Does the AHL program improve SFPs with lower-educated parents focused on children’s oral language development, parental self-efficacy, and the frequency of language activities parents conducted at home ? And: 2) Are there differences that can be attributed to the quality of delivery by teachers and the education levels of parents? The results of Study 1 show that the intervention contributed to participation of all parents, regardless of their level of education. At the posttest, their reported participation in parent-child activities was 98%. No overall significant increases were found for parents’ perceptions of the SFPs in support of children’s language development, nor differences in effects for quality of teacher delivery in classrooms. We did find an increase in the home language activities of the group of parents with the lowest education levels. Only the lowest educated parents reported significantly lower ratings at pretest compared to lower- and higher-educated parents and improved their ratings at the posttest. Study 2 investigates parent-child interactions during specifically designed parent-child activities provided at four schools applying the AHL steps. In this study, we selected parents with the two lowest levels of education (primary education or lower secondary education until the age of 15 as their highest attained level). The research questions were: Does the AHL program lead to increases in the parent-child interaction from pretest to posttest? And: Are there differences that can be attributed to the quality of delivery by teachers? The results of Study 2 show a significant increase in three aspects of quality of interaction (i.e., child involvement, parental autonomy, and emotional support) in the two parent-child activities from pretest to posttest. In addition, dyads in the high delivery group ( n = 15) showed an increase in the development on one aspect of the quality of interaction (i.e., cognitive support), on all aspects of the quantity of interaction (i.e., number of used words by child and parent, turn-taking), and on two aspects of the quality of language (i.e., decontextualized and other type of language), compared to those in the low delivery group ( n = 4). This effect was only found for the second activity, which had a more joyful nature compared to the first activity.