Teachers' language practices and children outcomes: A scoping review protocol

The extant literature acknowledges the existence of a relationship between the language used by adults towards children, the linguistic input, and children’s language development and learning (Rowe, 2012 ; Weiss et al., 2022). In this line, some authors have focused on teachers' language practices due to their privileged position in interactions with young children (Eadie, 2022), enabling them to interact with numerous children and adopt practices that facilitate learning. Two distinct research streams have analyzed this language: linguists and psycholinguists have examined the linguistic and interactive strategies that support the children's oral language development (Cartmill, 2016 ; Rowe & Snow, 2020), while developmental psychologists have examined teachers' language and its association with the development of specific academic learning (e.g. mathematics, reading comprehension) (Grammer et al., 2016; Urban et al., 2023). Despite the shared objectives, these two research domains evolve independently. A comprehensive description of the data and evidence on teachers' language promoting the development of children's learning (e.g. oral language, written language, mathematics, etc.) will facilitate the identification of the characteristics of teachers' language practices and their potential relationships with these different children's learnings. A scoping review is therefore relevant because it will aim to map and synthesize all the existing evidence about teachers' language practices that have been studied in association with the development of oral language and/or academic learning. Finally, the review will offer an overview and a better understanding of the characteristics and nature of teachers' language addressed to children.