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Environmental and Human Rights Issues in Language Education: An Investigation of Global and Local ELT Textbooks and Teachers’ Perceptions

Rajabi Kondlaji, Amin | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 46368 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Alemi, Minoo
  7. Abstract:
  8. In the past few decades the use of textbooks has increased dramatically in ELT due to the growing need for English both as a foreign and second language all over the world. Along with this growth in textbook application in ELT, textbook evaluation as a comparably new line of esearch has gained significant attention from both researchers and ELT specialists. As an attempt to contribute to this growing body of research, the present study was conducted to evaluate eight most popular global and local textbooks which are taught in Iranian ELT institutes in order to investigate the realization of environmental and human rights issues as well as other various topics in ELT textbooks in Iranian context and teachers’ perceptions. The reading sections of the target textbooks were analyzed for the realization environmental and human rights issues and various topics. The researcher employed an emergenist design throughout the analysis of the textbooks. After the analysis a tentative list of 32 topics emerged. Topics with less than 4 occurrences in all the textbooks were either submerged to other topics or removed from the list which left the researcher with 28 topics. In the second phase of the study, in order to explore teachers’ perceptions.the researcher devised an open-ended questionnaire composed of 11 open-ended questions followed by a likert-scale rating of the topics to be rated by EFL teachers.
    The questionnaire was reviewed by two experts in the field and after applying the suggested changes, the questionnaire was administered to 100 Iranian EFL teachers.Teachers’ answers received from the questionnaires were analyzed to extract teachers’ perceptions. After the analysis of the data both from the questionnaire and the textbooks, the results were presented in both descriptive and inferential statistics that is, frequency, percentage and the means through tables and figures. The study revealed that (a) ELT textbooks are not consistent in their reflection of various topics including environmental and human rights issues (b) There is considerable difference among different proficiency levels in the textbooks in the realization of iv topics (c) There are considerable mis-matches between teachers’ preferences of topics and their reflection in ELT textbooks (d) the nature of topics can affect degree of student participation and engagement in ELT classes (f) textbooks are not merely a tool for language learning but they are also a means to raise consciousness about key issues in the world. The results of the study could be helpful for curriculum developers, instructors, and education authorities to become aware of the content of global and local textbooks currently used in ELT classes. The findings of this study also will help material-developers develop textbooks which are in line with teachers’ preferences regarding various topics
  9. Keywords:
  10. Textbook Evaluation ; English Language Teaching ; Human Rights Issues ; Environmental Issues ; Teachers Perceptions

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