Martine van der Pluijm

65 Creating partnerships – a formative evaluation Our main research question is: What modifications of the prototype are needed to contribute to sustainable SFPs directed at lower-educated parents and their young children’s language development? To answer this central question, we formulated four subquestions: 1. Are teachers able to implement the prototype in their classroom? 2. Do teachers perceive the prototype as usable? 3. Does the prototype contribute to (lower-educated) parental involvement in support of young children’s language development? 4. How can school teams continue their SFPs in support of children’s language development? METHOD Participants We contacted 19 primary schools in the city of Rotterdam (the Netherlands) in areas with high percentages of lower-educated families. An additional criterion for participation was prioritizing the collaboration with lower-educated parents as a key activity for at least one year. If schools were interested, we informed them about the objectives and conditions of our research. We requested each school to appoint at least two teachers of preschool (pupils aged 3 to 4), kindergarten (pupils aged 4 to 6), first grade (pupils aged 6 to 7), and/or second grade (pupils aged 7 to 8). In addition, we requested schools to appoint members (teachers, the principal, and the parent educator) to participate in the design teams. Three schools with five locations agreed to our objectives and were invited to participate. In these three schools, we asked parent educators to involve parents at school through informal contacts with parents and through regular parent meetings about child education (e.g., stimulating child learning, healthy food). The teachers (10), principals (6), and parent educators (3) were prepared to be intensively involved in the research activities. The teachers taught four different age groups: preschool (1), kindergarten (5), grade 1 (1), and grade 2 (3). In total, parents of 178 children were involved in the classrooms of these ten teachers. Most of these parents were lower educated: 37% of the parents had attained primary education as their highest education level, 35% had completed secondary education up to the age of 15. The remaining 27% of the parents had finished education ranging from secondary school at 16 or older to university.