Martine van der Pluijm

178 Chapter 6 environment and improving partnerships with parents (e.g., Sheridan et al., 2019). Teachers may not be familiar with this theory and may have visions that prioritize school expectations about child learning and assume parental involvement is needed to establish school objectives. These different expectations of parental engagement might be counterproductive (Kim & Sheridan, 2015). Furthermore, teachers might benefit from illustrations of the problems that lower-educated parents encounter in the home environment and that impact child language development. Third, joint inquiry can be used to stimulate teachers’ reflections on how they can improve their work with parents. Active engagement of teachers to construe new behavior is a condition for the professional development of teachers (e.g., Van Veen et al., 2012). Teachers can be involved by exploring their existing partnerships (e.g., “Do you have warm relationships with all parents? With whom do you have these relationships and with whom not? Why?”). They can be stimulated to investigate possible blind spots (e.g., “How many parents in your classroom provide a rich language environment to their children according to your observations and how do you know?”). In our studies, we experienced that creating time for sharing experiences related to theories and scientific knowledge can stimulate teachers to explore practical barriers. More specific questions can help teachers reflect on their roles in support of child language development (e.g., “What can you do as a teacher, when you see that the parent does not talk to the child?”, “How can you help the parent to use more language?”). These investigations with teachers become most productive during networks where teachers exchange their experiences that contribute to reflection (Epstein et al., 2019). Most teachers will conclude that they experience more barriers than expected and that they are not the only ones. Teachers need this awareness to change their behavior (Rogers, 2003). Afinal proposal is to align expectations about the process to improve teachers’workwithparents. When teachers decide to become involved in a program to improve their work with parents, inquiry will remain a key factor for change. In our studies, we learned that coaches should align expectations about the nature of the professionalization program. It should be clear that there is no instant package or prescribed method that can change parent behavior. Teachers should realize that they are responsible for triggering improvements adapted to families’ abilities and knowledge by their continuous plan-do-act cycles. This type of professionalization could be new to teachers. It might contrast prior experiences of teachers with programs that were pre- scripted that required them to follow the content precisely. Coaches can use the AHL program to structure the professionalization process and work step-by-step on improving SFPs in support of child language development and developing the needed abilities of teachers. It will require time and space for teachers to become familiar with this different type of learning based on professional autonomy (e.g., Stokhof, 2018). This research and our follow-up studies