Quality of child care affects the development of children in important ways. According to Tietze et al. (1998, p. 389) developmental differences of up to one year can be explained by the quality of child care. The educational process quality deserves special attention insofar as it can be seen as transmitter of the structure and orientation quality of child care which influences the development of children directly (Tietze et al., 1998, p. 225). Against this background, the quality of the teacher-child interaction is particularly important. It is an important determinant for the development of children’s academic achievement and social-emotional competence (Mashburn 2008, Siraj-Blatchford 2002). Mashburn (2008) shows that there is an increase in linguistic and academic skills in children if educators support them systematically in their learning process.
Several national studies show that the average interaction quality of kindergartens in Germany is below the quality level of “good”. According to Fried (2011) teachers use linguistic strategies that do not ensure the best possible conditions for child development.  

A large-scale national study on the quality of day care centers also shows that the quality of education in child care regarding  emergent mathematics, literacy and science, are insufficient in more than 50 percent (Tietze et al., 2012), a further examination by Tietze, Rossbach and Grenner (2005) revealed similar findings. König (2009) also recognized unfavorable results in her videobased study regarding the verbal input by teachers in everyday practice. It proves that daily kindergarten routine is rarely characterized by a stimulating exchange between teacher and child (König 2009). National and international studies confirm this pattern of findings (Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2008, Kuger & Kluczniok 2008; Smidt, 2012).

Therefore, the goal of "QuafkoS - qualification for a competent language support" is to improve the quality of interaction in child care centers by increasing the competence of language support teachers. The study investigates whether training in combination with individual coaching or mentoring sessions results in improvements in teachers output and has a positive effect on the teacher-child interaction. Here, the term of language support competence defined by Fried and Briedigkeit (2008) is central. They define "Language support competence" as ability of teachers to handling the support children in their early language education and to cope possible problems of childrens language development.

The basis for the change in the interaction behavior of teachers are coaching and mentoring sessions, respectively. This includes a reflective conversation of a videotaped storybook transfer with the method of "dialogical storybook reading" as well as the development of a separate project to implement one of the subjects for training in the educational practice.

The method of "dialogic storybook reading" was chosen because international studies show that it leads to an improvement of language competencies within a few weeks and because it can easily be recognized by teachers (Zevenbergen & Whitehurst, 2008, Arnold et al., 1994). The "dialogic storybook reading“ is also a favorable choice because educators stimulate the participation of children by question and feedback techniques and enhance their own language support competence.

The fundamental questions of the present study are:
1. Do interaction structures of dialogic reading of shared picture books improve over the measurement period? With regard to this question, the following hypotheses can be derived:

The more coaching respectively mentoring sessions take place…

• the more teachers learn to use the strategies of dialogic reading.
• the less turn takings they have.
• the more complex questions they use and less closed and simple questions.  

2. Does the quality of linguistic-cognitive support level of teachers in everyday practice improve over the measurement period?

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