Conversation Analysis in Early Childhood Studies

Children’s interaction—whether in families, schools, health care, or the justice system—offers a rich terrain for utilizing conversation analysis (CA), revealing the intricate ways that children engage with others (Ekberg et al., 2022; O’Reilly & Lester, 2015; Tuncer, Gil‑let & Leite, 2022). Research on early childhood using ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) has developed into a distinctive academic area. Emphasizing an emic ori‑entation to exploring the lives of young children, this work aligns with contemporary per‑spectives by positioning infants (0–2 years), toddlers (2–3 years), and young children (3–8 years) as capable and competent members of society. This chapter discusses interactional research conducted from an EMCA perspective within family homes and early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings, where the mechanisms of socialization and learning are of predominant interest. While CA has traditionally focused primarily on turn‑taking and sequential organization, EMCA unites praxeological concerns with CA’s analytical insights and procedures to explore how social order is achieved by members in multimodal ways. Applying an EMCA approach to everyday interaction involving the youngest members of society, research in this area has demonstrated how infants, toddlers, and young children actively contribute to the co‑production of social interaction, relations, and the social order (Bateman & Church, 2017; Church & Bateman, 2022; Danby & Theobald, 2012). As such, EMCA affords opportunities to provide evidence‑based documentation of young children’s capabilities, revealing how they participate in everyday interaction with adults and peers. Multimodal sequential analysis (Goodwin, 2000; Mondada, 2019) demonstrates very young children’s social competence and specifies their recurring interactional practices. Prior work has mapped out a broad range of multi‑semiotic resources that children use to organize their participation, demonstrating how they agentively build their social worlds and peer cultures through talk and embodied action. The objectives of EMCA‑inspired research are diverse: While some studies are primarily directed at deepening our understanding of children’s interactional competence and resources, other research is directed at applying the findings to address practical issues, with the aim of improving caregiving practices and children’s experiences.
The goal of this chapter is to showcase the growing body of research from international early childhood scholars working within the EMCA tradition. The sections below represent three main areas of EMCA research in early childhood, beginning with studies demonstrating the interactional competence of infants, toddlers, and young children, then moving on to morality and socialization, and finally, addressing pedagogy and learning in interaction. In conclusion, we consider directions for future research.