Martine van der Pluijm

74 Chapter 3 Afterwards, she explained that it was difficult for her to accept that some parents were unable to help their children (e.g., hesitant speech, insufficient Dutch language proficiency) and how this impacted her motivation. The other six teachers experienced similar difficulties. Their efforts to stimulate interaction between parents and children were often thwarted when parents continued directing the child instead of stimulating child initiative. Each of the seven teachers needed more knowledge and support to establish the principle and more coaching cycles (2-4) than initially planned. During these coaching cycles, additional interactive sessions with parents were designed and tested. These focused on explaining the parent-child activities (e.g., the different roles teachers and parents can play to stimulate children’s language development and the value of child initiative). After these sessions, teachers were able to stimulate interaction more easily, as more parents evoked child initiative. Do teachers perceive the prototype as usable? (research question 2) Perceptions of compatibility, feasibility, and relevance We conducted interviews with the teachers to evaluate the compatibility, the feasibility, and the relevance of their work with parents of each of the design principles. We recorded whether their evaluation was positive (+), negative (-), or mixed (+/). Table 3.4 shows the results. Four teachers (1, 2, 7, 9) evaluated design principle 1 [Assess the HLE of pupils] as compatible, feasible, and relevant for their work with parents. Six teachers (3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10) assessed this principle as less compatible with their work, four teachers (3, 4, 8, 10) as less feasible, and two teachers (5, 6) as less relevant. Moreover, assessing the HLE was new to nine teachers (except teacher 1). Teachers had problems to understand the specific concepts (e.g., parent educational level, literacy skills, home language, interactive parent behavior) and to obtain this information about their pupils’ families (e.g., school administration, asking parents, observing). This unfamiliarity influenced their evaluations and led to teachers’ suggestions to improve the compatibility (see next section) and feasibility of this design principle. Most teachers decided to implement these improvements since they thought the principle was relevant for their work with children and parents as it improved their insight in families’ situations. Some teachers had more parents in their classroomwith low levels of education (i.e., 14% to 62% primary education and less, 6% to 43% lower secondary education up to 15 years of age) than they expected. Additionally, teachers observed that parents had more literacy problems (e.g., problems with reading the schools’ newsletter, problems with signing forms) than expected (i.e., 33% to 76% of the parents in the classroom). More parents also had a different home language than expected (i.e., 81% to 100%). These eight teachers, who had no prior experience in assessing the home language, reacted positively towards the relevance of the first principle. Two teachers