Martine van der Pluijm

28 Chapter 2 environment is different in families with lower-educated parents as well. Lower-educated parents provide less encouraging and warm relationships with their children that evoke the use of oral language (Britto & Brooks-Gun, 2001; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991). They tend to be more directive with an emphasis on learning by repetitive practice. In contrast, higher-educated parents tend to use speech that follows the child’s perspective (Lareau, 2002) and emphasize learning by curiosity, informal learning, and having fun (Fitzgerald, Spiegel, & Cunningham, 1991). These different practices are often related to the limited resources of lower- educated parents, such as school experience and examples in their own family environment (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005; Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003). Moreover, lower-educated parents initiate relatively few literacy or academic activities, such as reading to their children (Yarosz & Barnett, 2001), talking with children about school, and spending time helping with schoolwork (Kutner, Greenberg, Yin, Boyle, Hsu, & Dunleavy, 2007; O’Donnell & Mulligan, 2008). Many of these issues can be explained by the low literacy skills of lower-educated parents (Laghzaoui, 2011; Sénéchal, 2012). Low literacy skills belong to the most important defining criteria of many lower-educated parents (Drijkoningen, 2015; Kurvers, Van de Craats, & Van Hout, 2015; Reder et al., 2011). Empirical studies show a strong relationship between the way mothers engage their child in learning experiences that promote language development and their own reading skills (Bynner & Parsons, 2006; De Coulon, Meschi, & Vignoles, 2008; Haden, Reese, & Fivush 1996; Neuman, 1996; Sénéchal, 1997). In addition, disappointing experiences of these parents in their educational careers can result in low feelings of self-efficacy and can negatively influence their parental role (Fitzgerald, Spiegel, & Cunningham, 1991; Neuman, Hagedorn, Celano, & Daly, 1995). Despite the importance of parents’ literacy levels, little research has focused on the way family literacy interventions should be tailored specifically to the target group of lower-educated parents with low literacy skills (Manz, Hughes, Barnabas, Bracaliello, & Ginsburg-Block, 2010; Menheere & Hooge, 2010; Sénéchal 2012; Van Steensel, McElvany, Kurvers, & Herppich, 2011). Activities and strategies that impact oral language development Knowledge about the importance of a rich home language environment has led to the development of a variety of family literacy interventions (Wasik & Van Horn, 2012). These interventions are characterized by the inclusion of both children and parents to enrich home literacy practices (Hannon, 2003), but vary in their aims and the types of activities provided. Recent meta-analyses and reviews show positive outcomes of family literacy interventions to enhance language and literacy skills of children (Goodall & Vorhaus, 2011; Manz et al., 2010; Mol, Bus, De Jong, & Smeets, 2008; Reese, Sparks & Leyva, 2010; Sénéchal & Young, 2008; Van Steensel et al., 2011). However, reported effect sizes range from small (Van Steensel et al., 2011) to moderate and large (Mol et al., 2008; Sénéchal & Young, 2008). Despite the lack of detailed socioeconomic background information (Fan & Chen, 2001) and the diversity of definitions