Abstracts - Earli

features of the academic register are a higher lexical density, a higher lexical diversity andgrammatically more complex sentence constructions. In our longitudinal study in the Netherlands,the development of academic language use in preschool children is investigated. Furthermore, it isthe aim of the study to establish the degree to which parents co-construct this kind of language use.It is to be expected that parents who show more features of the academic register in their languageinput at home, might –implicitly or explicitly- prepare their children for academic languageacquisition and therefore enhance school success. In the present paper, a comparison will be madebetween the language input during book reading by teachers and parents of the same children,focussing on the above-mentioned distinguishing features of the academic register. 22 Dutchchildren participated in this study. Both the mothers and the teachers of the children performed abook-reading task. The conversations resulting from the book reading were recorded on video andsubsequently transcribed. In order to determine linguistic differences between the parental inputand teacher-input, lexical and syntactic features of the language input across the two contexts willbe compared. Furthermore, various aspects of the complexity of the adult language input will berelated to the children’s scores on a standardized vocabulary test. Educational implications of ourfindings will be discussed.The school–family relation in low socioeconomic environments in Quebec : Impacts of aneducational project in nutrition on the attitudes of teachers with regard to parentsJohanne Bedard, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaFrancois Larose, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaYves Couturier, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaVeronique Lisee, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaIn this communication we present the results of evaluation of the effects of an educationalpartnership project in nutrition offered in disadvantaged school environments in Montreal onparental implication in class and school, and on the quality of parent-teacher interactions. Wecompare our results with those obtained with a national sample of teachers on these same objects.A survey by questionnaire conducted with 1260 Quebec teachers provides a full portrait of theirattitudes with regard to the parental participation of parents in school life. In a parallel way, datafrom a second survey by questionnaire and interviews realized with all the teacher participants(N=60) in the project ‘Little cooks-networked parents’, implemented in eight Montreal schools,allows us to treat the effects of an educational partnership project in nutrition on teacher attitudesconcerning parental implication in school environments. The teachers in the national sample notethe weak involvement of parents from low socioeconomic environments in the supervision of theirchildren’s learning. Their peers who participate in the ‘kitchen-nutrition’ workshops sponsored bythe project notice the direct effects on parental involvement as well as the quality and frequency oftheir interactions with parents of their pupils and the generalization of these effects at the entireschool level. Our results confirm the positive impact of the integration of parents in thesupervision of activities pertaining to learning situations, in co-management with teachers, on theirattitudes with regard to home-school collaboration. The recognition of parental educationalcompetencies and their relevance in school contexts foster the emergence of a real partnershipbetween parents in disadvantaged environments and school personnel. Our results alsodemonstrate the power of implementation of home-school-community partnership projectsinscribed in a perspective that is ecosystem-based.– 338 –