Input and participation frameworks in early childhood

Abstract

This chapter provides a selective review of language socialization (LS) research in early childhood, as well as relevant research in adjacent fields, to critically discuss the different ways in which concepts and analytical categories, such as input and participation frameworks, have been further theorized (or not) since the original formulation of the LS framework. A central argument is that as LS studies have turned to examine the ideological dynamics at play in bilingual/multilingual communities undergoing language shift, most developmental questions related to whether and how children learn from the language(s) around them have remained untheorized, which has inadvertently made space for the return of some psycholinguistic assumptions about input and language acquisition originally problematized by the LS framework. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of current interdisciplinary conversations where an expanded view of input may be especially needed to avoid deficit views of children, their families, and their communities.