Common challenges in diverse contexts

In their introduction to this volume, Enever and Driscoll describe this collection as the latest product of the Research Network in Early Language Learning. Established in 2015, the international professional network aims to deepen our mutual understanding of early language learning and stimulate collaboration on young learners’ (3–12 years) second language (L2), foreign language (FL), and minority language (ML) learning across disciplines and regions. Reflecting the breadth of the field of early language learning, the present collection is composed of seven studies that are broad in terms of scope, region, and methodology. Despite such diversity, the papers in this volume are united in their effort to contextualize the policy and practice of early language learning. Policy is not merely a system but rather reflects dynamic interaction, or synergy, between agents and environments, which are themselves multi-layered and complex entities. This dynamic synergy, both in space and time, is the “context.” Policy discussions without contextualization are essentially meaningless. Although conducting a policy analysis with sufficient contextualization is always challenging, such analyses – including the seven presented in this volume – can help us identify common underlying mechanisms of how policy works, despite their seeming differences. Similarly, as exemplified in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system model, human development and learning are also embedded in multi-layered and interconnected environments, or what Bronfenbrenner called ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). We cannot understand children’s language learning without contextualizing it in dynamic, whole ecological systems. Sufficiently contextualized studies on early language learning can help us find common mechanisms and issues associated with children’s language learning and teaching, even when those studies take place in substantially varied environments. Collectively, the papers in this volume address important contextual changes that we have to keep in mind when considering the policy and practice of early language learning; these include changes in (1) learner characteristics, (2) technology, and (3) pedagogical approaches in language education. These changes