Martine van der Pluijm

179 General discussion have shown that providing time and space for teachers to learn can trigger behavioral changes (Van der Pluijm, 2019; 2020). As a consequence, working with parents may enrich teachers’ profession instead of what might sometimes feel like a burden. Optimizing pre-service education During pre-service education, teachers are not sufficiently prepared for building partnerships with parents (Denessen, Kloppenburg, Bakker, & Kerkhof, 2009; Epstein & Sanders, 2006; Thompson, Willemse; Mutton, Burn, & De Bruïne, 2018). In our research, we noticed that teachers lacked the knowledge and competencies to build reciprocal relationships, especially when involving parents with different educational and cultural backgrounds. We have some recommendations for strengthening the curriculum of pre-service teacher education. First, improving teacher education for working with parents requires a vision that acknowledges the importance of parental roles in child learning at home. As argued in the previous section, educators may have visions that prioritize schools’ expectations about child learning and assume parental involvement is only needed to establish school objectives (Kim & Sheridan, 2015). Recognizing the home environment for child learning based on relevant theories (i.e., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Epstein, 1987) is an important requirement for teacher training as it positions working with parents as a vital part of teaching (cf., Walker, 2019). Parent engagement should become an important part of the curriculum. Attention should focus on family background, such as parental education levels, parental language and literacy levels, cultural backgrounds, and economic circumstances that play a role in child language development and that affect children’s opportunities (Evans, 2013; Waddel, 2013). Besides these introductions into the body of knowledge on parent engagement, stimulating candidates to interact with parents (i.e., having informal talks or introductory conferences with parents) should be a priority (Epstein, 2018). Teachers in our research were particularly interested in learning about reciprocal communication. Using reciprocal communication strategies stimulated them to exchange views with parents about supporting child language development. These exchanges led to information about children and warm relationships with parents. For this aim, we used simulations that facilitated situated learning, a way of learning that uses authentic situations to develop the required competencies (Kolb, 2014; Lave &Wenger, 1991). This type of learning, such as repetitive cycles of learning through real experiences, can be useful to provide candidates with the elementary skills before they start their profession (Walker & Leg, 2018). During our research, we experienced that integrating the use of theory, application and reflecting on personal attitudes towards parents (based on the taxonomy of Dee Fink, 2013), stimulated teachers to improve their skills and motivation to work with parents. This type of