On ELT
Textbook Writers: A worldwide review of this role
Jeisson S Méndez Lara[1]
Abstract
The following
review article analyses the main developments regarding the research topic of
ELT (English Language
Teaching) - textbook writers worldwide: his role in
the arena of ELT material production. In the article the book writer is
considered as a subject to work on his accounts as a writer, his points of view,
and the struggles that arise with the publishing industry, the recognition, his
rights, and fees regarding textbook creation. This
interest is rooted in my own experience as an English teacher who has designed
materials for teaching English as a workplace demand. Employing research
profiling and database search, in sixty articles published worldwide (Japan,
India, Pakistan, the USA, UK, among others), three main trends related to the
issue of ELT textbook writer were found. The first one shows that there is a
top-down hegemonic practice in the production of material in which it is
subject to the writer. The second one shows international publishing companies’
preferences for expert ELT textbook writers as a model over novice writers. And
the third one that shows that the educational publishing industry replicates
the model of one culture-one language, ignoring ELT textbook writers' critical
cultural views. Out of the analysis it can be concluded that this issue of ELT
textbook writing has not been widely problematized within the field of ELT.
|
Keywords: ELT textbook writers, English Language
textbooks, Hegemonic practice, ELT material production. |
Escritores de libros de texto en inglés: una revisión
bibliográfica
Resumen
En el siguiente artículo de revisión
muestro un análisis de los principales desarrollos relacionados con el tema de
investigación de ELT (Enseñanza
del Idioma Inglés) - escritores de libros de texto
en el mundo: el papel en el ámbito de la producción
de materiales de ELT en el que establecí al autor como un sujeto para
trabajar en sus relatos como escritor, sus puntos de vista, y los conflictos con la industria, del
reconocimiento, los derechos de autor, y remuneraciones en el ámbito de la
creación de libros de texto de inglés. Este interés yace en mi experiencia como profesor de
inglés y en el que he diseñado materiales para la enseñanza del inglés en mi
lugar de trabajo. En el presente articulo empleé una búsqueda en bases de datos
por medio de la
minería de datos, en la que se
encontraron sesenta artículos publicados en todo el mundo en lugares
como Japón, India, Pakistán, Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, entre otros. El
análisis evidenció tres tendencias recurrentes: la primera, una práctica
hegemónica en la producción de material que está sujeto quien escribe textos.
La segunda muestra la preferencia de las editoriales internacionales por los escritores
expertos en libros de texto de ELT como modelo sobre los escritores novatos. La
tercera revela que las industrias editoriales educativas replican el modelo de
una cultura-un idioma, ignorando la visión cultural crítica del escritor de
libros de texto de ELT. Se concluye de este
análisis que los escritores de libros de texto de ELT es un área de
investigación que no ha sido ampliamente problematizada dentro del campo de
ELT.
|
Palabras
clave: Escritores de
libros de texto ELT, libros de texto en inglés, práctica hegemónica,
producción de material en ELT. |
Auteurs des manuels pour l’enseignement de l’anglais: une révision bibliographique
Résumé
Dans l’article suivant je montre une analyse des
développements principaux par rapport au sujet de recherche de l’enseignement
de l’anglais (ELT) et les auteurs des manuels dans le monde:
le rôle dans le domaine de la production des matériels de ELT, où l’auteur
devient un sujet de recherche avec ses récits, ses points de vue et ses
conflits avec l’industrie, la reconnaissance, les droits d’auteur et les
rémunérations dans le domaine de la création des manuels pour l’enseignement de
l’anglais. Cet intérêt relève de mon expérience en tant qu’enseignant
d’anglais, au cours de laquelle j’ai crée des
matériels pour l’enseignement de l’anglais dans mon lieu de travail. La
recherche dans des bases de données a permis de trouver soixante articles
publiés dans le monde entier y compris le Japon, l’Inde, le Pakistan, les
États-Unis, le Royaume Uni, entre autres. L’analyse a mis en évidence trois
tendances fréquentes: la première, une pratique
hégémonique dans la production du matériel, à laquelle les auteurs des textes
sont soumis. La deuxième montre la
préférence des maisons d’édition internationales pour les auteurs experts sur
les auteurs débutants. La troisième montre que les industries éditoriales
éducatives reproduisent le modèle d’une culture- une langue, tout en ignorant
la vision culturelle critique de l’auteur des manuels de ELT. De cette analyse
on conclut que la recherche autour des auteurs des manuels pour l’ELT n’a pas
été assez problématisée dans le domaine de l’ELT.
|
Mots clé: Auteurs des manuels d’ELT, manuels pour l’enseignement
de l’anglais, pratique hégémonique, production du matériel en ELT. |
Introduction
The process of becoming an
“author” in the arena of ELT materials is lifelong learning that contradicts
the mainstream assumption that any English Language Teacher can be a textbook
writer by his/her mere teaching preparation.
The purpose of tracing out ELT textbook writers' topics stems from the
fact that little attention has been paid to examining who is the ELT (English
Language Teaching) textbook writer as a subject involved in the teaching of the
English industry. This paper is useful to understand what this role implies as
well as provide an overview of the research developments concerning this topic
in worldwide chronological and geographical views.
In the first part of the article, readers will
find a chronological and geographical exploration of what has been said about the
ELT textbook writer to locate the knowledge produced by the mainstream assumption that any English
language teacher can be a textbook writer in this role “textbook writing” is a
process that requires and takes preparation, commitment and time-consuming. In
the second part, an in-depth review brings me to notice three trends. First, there
is a top-down hegemonic practice in the ELT textbook production that subjects
to the writer. Second, I will step on reviewing main academic works in the
sense of evidence of how international publishing houses prefer expert ELT
textbook writers as a model over novice writers. And finally, I will unveil how
the educational publishing industries replicate the
model of one culture-one language and the invisibility of ELT textbook writers'
critical cultural views. In the end, I will draw concluding remarks.
Profiling ELT Textbook writers in time and space.
In the body of this main
article, the term ‘profiling’ is being used as proposed by Castañeda-Peña
(2012), which was used to facilitate the identification of the three main
research trends by examining databases and implies answering questions related
to what is being researched in a specific field. The procedure followed to identify the information
was chosen by the title, year of publication, place where it was written,
abstract, and conclusions from databases like ScienceDirect, Scopus, Scival, ELSEVIER, and Academia. Using profiling helped me
to discover tendencies and relations as I could analyze almost sixty research articles
written worldwide. Once I could have the information, I correlated three
variables that emerge in the articles. The first one was the year in which the
ELT textbook design started calling the scholars attention. The second one was
the number of articles written about the ELT Textbook writer worldwide. And the
third one was the number of information written by the countries which have had
the must-be discourses and the countries which have proposed discourses against
those imposed discourses worldwide. As far as I had that information, I set the
information in a chronological map which helped me to establish three
categories of the ELT textbook writer worldwide.
The trace regarding ELT textbook writer
attempt to identify all studies published in academic journals worldwide.
Although there were articles written on the subject matter from 1960, a
preliminary analysis allowed me to select the period between 1988 and 2021 as
the most significant due to the number of scholars who showed their interest in
the textbook writers and material designed, based on the statistic provided by
the information display by close related words to ELT textbook writer, words
like; ELT author, ELT authorship, text developer, material designer help me to
spam the number of information and to draw the panorama through those years and
to place the ELT writer into the terraqueous globe. For example, from the years
1988 to 2003, the intellectual work concerning the ELT writer appears to be
absent from the interest of the scholars with just one article by Lamanna
(1988) in which the author problematized how the writers produced a textbook.
From 2003 the interest in the ELT writer started to rise between 2 and 9
articles available in 2009. The time between 2010 to 2021 the interest in ELT textbook
writers increased sixfold, being the year 2014 with more articles
publications in the area. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that,
in comparison to 1988, a critical movement swarmed through some articles Timmis, (2014), Harwood, (2014).
.fld/image002.png)
Figure 1. Geographic journal’s location
As for the geographical journals’
location, it can be said that academic production regarding ELT textbook
writers has a twofold distribution. Firstly, I found the articles which come
from countries where the big publishing industries come from like the USA (01
on map) and UK (02 on map). are more significant in the must-be discourses such
as guidelines for writers, and expert writers’ characteristics. Secondly, On
the other hand, in countries such as
Singapore, Vietnam, Korea, China, Russia, Brazil (02) Colombia (02), I
found articles that show the negative reactions and even resistance to working
with the material created by big publishing industries, these articles come
from countries like Argentina, Italy, Pakistan, Portugal, Malaysia, Mexico,
Kenya, India, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Japan.
.fld/image004.png)
Figure 2. Geographic ELT textbook writer’s location
It is important to notice that
although in Latin America I found just an article that clearly and directly
problematized the ELT textbook writer role (Bonilla, 2008) in Colombia,
scholars interested in material design, there is a clear tendency to
problematize the ELT material as monocultural and colonizing as the most
recognized publishing houses come from anglophone countries where the English
language is taken as the guide among other countries whose mother language is
not English and the production of the ELT textbooks has been carried out in
Anglo and European countries as the publishing industries domain the market
worldwide.
ELT
Textbook writers: a professional activity
Despite the body of research done
concerning ELT materials, including textbooks, little is known about the ELT
textbook writer, and the literature about their struggles when designing
material is scarce. In this paper, the textbook writer stands for the subject
who writes a textbook or coursebook is a professional activity, someone who
also designs and adapts material such as short sorties, picture dictionaries,
chants, worksheets, lessons, units, modules, student’s books, workbooks, audio
cassettes, CD ROMs, CDs, videos, games, and so forth for educational publishing
houses. The term “writer” seems straightforward to denote the creator and the
owner of a piece of work or be part of the design and creation of a textbook as
this paper calls attention to. The writers’ work is mainly intellectual and in
the other sense with an economic property; the author or ELT textbook writer receives
credit and acclaim, as well as responsibility for the product once is released
to the market. The idea that an author or ELT textbook writer is drawn to the
origin of the text persists despite the strong influence of late-twentieth-century
literary theory seeking to remove the writer from his position as the creator
of the text (Zhan, 2018). In this sense, the textbook writers who contribute to
big industries built the sense of these industries whose objectives are centered
on teaching language through the use of materials and in the same thought exemplify
methods and approaches worldwide, the same method used in a country is the same
user in another as they same book is implemented by ELT teachers. ELT writers contribute
to the construction of imagined communities available to the learners and
teachers, thus potentially limiting their visions as to what may constitute an
English-speaking world in their minds and they offer teachers the possibility
to adapt the material given using workbooks or extra sources to students.
English as a foreign language
in countries in which English is mandatory to be leaned and taught by
government policies in which neoliberalism has shaped the ELT writers' job, the
ELT teachers and students are immersed in the world of materials, in which the
big publishing houses and the ELT textbooks writers have constructed English as
a branded commodity along lines that are entirely congruent with the values and
practices of the new capitalism as they sell a world which is completely
different from the reality. In addition, the ELT textbook writers reveal the
identification of new capitalist values in textbook representations of a better
life, better jobs, professions, and occupations, or even a better status in the
society (Hurst, 2014; Modifi, 2019). Scholars work in
this research area address mainly the authors can provide predetermine input
rather than facilitate, language acquisition and development because the ELT
textbooks are Anglo-centric or Euro-centric in the topics and themes presented
so it reflects the authors’ assumptions about the best ways to learn, the author role does not have an important
role or is not relevant into each discussion (Asghar, 2014; Banegas, 2013;
Sewall, 2015; Timmis, 2014).
The panorama mentioned above
serves as a framework to explore more in-depth about who is the author who
designs material in Colombia, and their struggles or strengths in the field of
teaching and learning English, as Soto & Méndez (2020) presented textbook
contents with high levels of alienation burden, as well as superficial cultural
components. Furthermore, instrumentation to the submissive person – teachers
and students - who favors the dominant culture of English and does not offer
possibilities to embrace interculturality in ELF teaching contexts. It is
stated under that thought, the author or writers of textbooks imposes too much
authority over lessons, and contents, and constrains teachers in terms of
syllabus selection, teaching methodologies, and other pedagogical
decision-making in turn marginalizing teachers (Austin, 2010; Ulum et al., 2019; Bonilla, 2008).
Scholars operating in the United States,
Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom lead the international research
community who creates the materials (Canagarajah, 2005;
Lee, 2011; Gray, 2012). ELT writers not only produce knowledge on the matter of
teaching, but also produce textbooks, materials, tests, and training courses
that are consumed by countries that are off the center. In other words, some
educational institutions have taken for granted that commercial ELT textbooks
supply what is needed to help a language learner to become bilingual. Though,
these English language textbooks, which are not created for a specific context, may produce
a negative effect on students’ motivation since they usually provide content that
tends to generalize students’ needs and does not fulfill both learners’ and
teachers’ expectations (Encinas et al., 2019; Faudree,
2005; You, 2015).
I want to call attention to the
tendency to normalize the ELT textbook writer as someone who creates material
but most of the time is not as recognized as the publishing houses, it is not common for students or teachers to recognize
a well-known ELT Textbook writer but they can identify the names of worldwide known
publishing house industries, writers as “agents of publishers” whose principal
task is to produce materials which meet the criteria the publisher will have
set out for the intended market (Lake & Zitcer,
2012). The ELT Textbook writer and editors might struggle with the ideas they
plan to include in English textbooks as some ideas could have found their way
into a book but to which there might have been opposition from other members of
a team. The lack of flexibility from the ones who designed materials, because
they cannot adapt or personalize the books as they consider them should be.
Most of the ideas they have in mind could be completely different from what the
market considers is appropriate to publish to face the challenges during the
process like Bonding, syllabus interpretation, learner level, deadlines,
renegotiating royalty agreements, work-family commitments, and copyright laws (Kiai, 2015).
There
is a top-down hegemonic practice in the production of ELT textbooks that
subjects to the writer.
In this particular work, I extend the discussion of this first trend by
embracing some ideas from the hegemonic practices in the production of ELT
textbooks thought (Gray, 2010a; HU & Mckay, 2014;
Lamanna, 1988; Stoddart, 2007) concerning the
subjectivity of the ELT textbook writer while contesting some imperialism
practices identified before, during, and after the publication process.
Besides, the limited freedom of writers to create according to their criteria,
the subjection practices in accordance to contracts as they have to follow all
the guidelines given to receive the money offer for the job, and review
processes that publish the textbook to please the publishing house.
It is necessary to understand that there are a complete group of people
who work on materials, but they are aware of the neoliberal demands of the economic
growth worldwide to gain international recognition as it is believed that
foreign educational institutions which are the experts or “knowers,” which
provide scientific knowledge in the field of ELT education. For instance, Portugal
(Russell, 2010), the USA ( Devito, 2013), and the UK (Harwood, 2014) express the global textbooks
published in the West and marketed worldwide, such as well-known series
structure up to 90 percent of what goes on in worldwide classrooms in which
they must follow three different levels: Content, consumption, and production.
it is hardly
known that an institution can does not use textbooks, and even the main
priorities of teachers or administrators when choosing a coursebook is not
thinking of teaching ideologies that impact the identities of language
users, but when ELT textbooks are defined as “authentic texts” we somehow know
it requires a process in which native speakers or native ELT textbook writers
took part on it.
In this process, the ELT writer is accompanied by another actor in the
process of textbook production ‘‘the publisher’’, they are the ones who have
only an estimate of the manuscript and the probabilities of its sale, they know
of the textbook is profitable or not based on calculations of the price they
should pay the writer for writing the material. Authors and writers have brought
the opportunity to transmit notions, misleading students’ understanding of the
texts about the false or inaccurate perceptions of the world. Furthermore, the
publisher prefers to own all rights in the printed form of the manuscript as
they hired the ELT textbook writers, and where the ELT textbook writer is
willing to allow this arrangement, a lump sum, agreed upon between the parties,
is paid to the writer, and his rights to the manuscript and to the books made
from it from that time on ceasing, except of course the right to have his name
placed upon the title page (Daghigh & Rahim,
2020). And in this whole process, in case the textbook is profitable the publishing
house will increase their earnings, but the writer does not receive further
compensation for the work done (Atkinson, 2020a).
The writers before starting to
create material must follow certain parameters, they classify materials
development according to their sources and functions as follows. 1.
Pedagogically, Modified, (authenticated) or authentic (sources and/or tasks) 2.
a) Informative b) instructional c) Experiential d) Eliciting and e)
Exploratory. The textbooks must follow a framework which is given by the
industries: 1: Identification of a need or problem: 2: Exploration of the need or problem 3:
Contextual Realization 4: Pedagogical realization 5. Production of materials (Jolly
& Bolitho, 1988, 2011). In all the processes when the ELT textbook writer
is creating the material, the circle culture is extensively dominant as it must
be encompassed in the globally written ones whose components contain social
norms, traditions, beliefs, and social values both implicitly and explicitly.
They in an intentionally or unintentionally manner not only censored the
information to block autonomous learning but also attempted to pervert the
themes of various texts to meet the censorship guidelines set by the textbook board
from the publishing houses in than sense textbook writers were the biased and
misleading representation of the multilingual and multicultural reality of the
contemporary world. The controlling power of involved groups in developing a
textbook puts the ELT textbook writer in an uncomfortable position in which
they must accept the job in those terms or just quit the work done, as in some
cases, the industry just finds another writer to complete the work (Atkinson,
2020b). in the same though, ELT textbook writers not only mediate subject
knowledge but also reproduce ideologies, they promote Anglo-American
pedagogical practices and teaching methodologies in some respects with the
views and wishes of other stakeholders.
Another aspect to consider,
the ELT textbook writer who does not want to follow the framework imposed by
the industry will have a hard path to publishing as the big names publishing
companies have absorbed lots of independent textbook companies worldwide. Some educational
publishing houses have disappeared because of these mergers and acquisitions.
They have become brand names inside large companies. These familiar names
include Macmillan, Merrill, and Glencoe (imprints of Mc Graw-Hill);
Prentice-Hall, Silver Burdett, Ginn, Addison Wesley, Long man, and Scott
Foresman (imprints of Pearson); Holt, Rinehart, and Winston (an imprint of
Harcourt); and D.C. Heath and McDougal Littell
(imprints of Houghton Mifflin (Sewall, 2005, pp. 499). The ELT textbook writer
is in constant lack economic power allowing hierarchies of social and political
power as they cannot consent to the network of power within the capitalist
markets. The power and authority presented by the writers in the textbooks are
seen as a critical site for the exercises of power because they can transmit
ideas through the language teaching, it is also considered legitimate
knowledge, it allows the learner the idea of what might be accomplished during
one course, dominate what students learn, and are always presented in the institution’s
curriculums (Brown, 2014; Swanson, 2014; Wachholz
& Mullaly, 2001).
The ELT writer thus is forced
to the deliberate destruction of other cultures and the destruction of
knowledge has permeated the way our local knowledge is displayed, the ELT
textbook writer has been part of the destruction of the local knowledge and
also cultures as ‘‘the incompleteness of knowledge’’ as a form of dominations,
oppression, and supremacy of other culture. Not only it has erased the memories
from the periphery cultures but also the manner of teachers and students
perceive the circle culture as superior. The subject position of the ELT
textbook writer who designs materials placed as an occupation in the classroom
which is not necessary through foreign occupation but an occupation which has
been presented into the material, the way how the images, methods, foreign agencies,
natives have displaced the local ELT teachers knowledge and experiences and
have placed the teacher as a subaltern in which cannot have active
participation in the students learning processes if they do not follow the
methods, and procedures post by the publishing industries into the ELT textbook
(Ulum et al., 2019). It seems to be those textbook
writers are subjected to conditions given by the publishing house textbook
writers do not have permission to allocate resistance to include what they
consider to be relevant or important in what they design in ELT textbooks.
Publishing houses preference expert ELT textbook writers
as a model over novice
The second general trend
encompasses studies related to expert and novice ELT textbook writers, there is
also a concern related to the desire of becoming bilingual countries worldwide
that they included colonial practices in the ELT classrooms when accepting the
material which comes from big publishing industries, the fact that the local
knowledge and expertise have not been considered in those decisions and have
included the implementation of the North view of how English should be taught
and learned in each academic context, the content standards as the use of
standardized materials, tests, and methods. All in all, it has become the ELT
teacher as a consumer of knowledge rather than a producer in most of the globe.
Students implicitly accept the power enclosed in the books because they have
little knowledge and experience to judge, and they are not challenged to do it
in the academic context either they are considered an authority because they
are reliable, valid, and written by recognized publishing industries (Vettorel et al. 2001).
At first, sight, although the
quality of ESOL textbooks has unquestionably improved over the last few years,
there is a large body of research to suggest that they often continue to
present learners with an impoverished or one-sided sample of the target
language, following the works by Casanave & Vandrick (2003), Gilmore (2011), and Lee (2006) presents an
analysis about what they call the ‘’expert’’ textbook writers is the one who
follows the framework to write textbooks and being published but is the editors
who set out three explicit goals for themselves and their sponsors (ELT
textbook writers): in the first place, they provide a "textual
mentor" for beginning scholarly writers, for the ones who want to start as
novice writers. It also means sitting down at a table together. Although the
actual writing process happens in the same room, collecting materials is the writer’s
task. Each one drafts a unit: First each person drafts a unit then each reads
the other’s unit and criticizes. Second, they provide information to textbook writers
who may be researching these literate practices and encourage experienced
writers to reflect on their practices, language teaching, and teacher-training
experience, use problem-solving skills, apply pedagogical reasoning skills, and
engage repertoire. Finally, they must consider aspects like: "Negotiating
and interacting;" "Identity construction," and "From the periphery.“ if the author does not have that into account,
the material is not published.
The perspective of administrators,
teachers, and students is that ELT textbooks produced by novice and local
writers are of poor quality which provokes them to have more confidence in foreign
publications from big publishing industries. Furthermore, expert ELT writers
are driven not merely by narrow intent but also by a desire to simplify a
complex linguistic situation for pedagogical purposes, they indicated that
their textbook authorship experiences had involved them in research and
planning, drafting and moderation, team-building efforts, informal trialing
and, later, opportunities to write different types of teaching and learning
materials. In the whole process, they fail to acknowledge the existence of
different varieties of English, the belief in the absolute correctness of
subjunctive and insist upon traditional forms, which are often quite out of
step with current English usage, and fails to demonstrate awareness of
linguistic variation in different contexts (Lee, 2006).
Novice and local ELT writers
have their books published for them at their own expense, in which case the
publisher makes an estimate of the cost of producing and publishing the work
and the writers pay the amount involved, in such sums as are agreed upon. In
this case, the ELT writer generally retains the copyright and other interests
in the book. The literature points to the influence of classroom experience on
materials design, teacher expertise can be understood by considering the
contexts in which teachers work but where textbooks are published at the novice
writers’ expense it is almost always because the publishers do not believe in
the work done by the novice writers so they consider the textbook would not be
profitable as there might not be a market interested in using the material. On the other hand, when the industry knows the
textbook comes from a well-recognized writer, it is known as "advance
royalty ", in this situation everything is paid for by the industry as
they consider that textbook is a very good commercial venture (Kiai, 2015).
The expertise involved in
experts ELT writers takes into consideration the help from co-writers who most
of the time do not know who they are, in some parts these co-writers represent
the country for which the book is intended, and the process of negotiation faces
the stress and strains to analyze the textbook from different angles, at the
end of this process they received drawbacks of the team working. The process
mentioned before will be the ideal one if they can follow the same steps for
each country they commercialize the textbook. But in
the whole process expert, ELT writers must ensure standardization so the
textbook which is sent to Asian countries, is the same for Latin American
countries, they avoid overlap and try to have a good relationship with the
publishers, and writers also devise units accordingly are planned and are sent
to the project coordinator for checking and the consultants get them for
suggestions as well and the whole group with the coordinator, consultant, ELT
textbook writer and all the member involved in the book creation meet to define
common agreements for the textbook.
Exploring the publishing
industries McKenzie et al. (2009) show that publishing houses also have publishers
who look for ELT writers who are experts on the topic they are writing about,
have a good writing style, and can meet deadlines, the knowledge and beliefs of
some ELT writers influence what it is included in textbooks but no matter how
good a book can be if there is not a market for it, there is no reason to write
or to take it into account to go throughout the whole publication process. That
is the reason, editors are responsible for a specific list of books that cover
certain topics or content areas, they take into accounts aspects like the
market, audience, target courses, prerequisites, students, course length,
trends, The competition, authors, and titles, competition strengths &
weakness, and the pedagogy; pedagogical approach implementation, innovations
and/or competitive advantages pedagogical elements (Laminack,
2017).
To a certain extent, novice
ELT textbook writers who are the writers who do not have enough experience
publishing material to editorial houses in the process of publishing textbooks
face some challenges as they get tired of following all the procedures set by the
industries team, what is more, they became contributors to the work of others
at the end of the whole process without receiving the credits for the work done
(Otto, 1992). The work for novice writers demands time, internal motivation,
effort, feedback, and determination, they deploy the writing processes of
reviewing, writing it down, and incubating to maintain the intense
concentration and effort to facilitate the production of textbook content, and they
draw heavily on his own experience, they might look through what other people
have done, but they rely on his intuition, highlights the professionals’
trajectories towards authorship, including research and writing apprenticeship
processes are important during the process of publishing. In that sense, they
identify characteristics and conditions that shaped each person’s authorship
trajectory but this identity as the novice is permeated when they become aware
of contextual demands, collaboration, networking requirements, and publishing
policies as well as their internal motivation to take strategic decisions (Bouckaert, 2018; Encinas et al.,
2019).
Educational
publishing industries replicate the model of one culture-one language, ignoring
ELT textbook writers' critical cultural views.
The last trend unveils
standpoints towards the ELT textbook writer's cultural views and the model of one
culture-one language. In addition, the relations of power that have shaped
history in the political, cultural, economic, and epistemological processes of
domination, this colonialism characteristics which come from the Anglocentrism,
and Eurocentrism have been perceived in the ELT textbooks production as an
excuse to open the doors to what globalization brings (Casper et al, 2014).
Textbooks also provide the context of globalization in which white students and
those from dominant cultural groups, learn about world history in general or
impose too much authority over lessons and constrain teachers in terms of
syllabus selection, teaching methodologies, and other pedagogical
decision-making in turn marginalizing teachers and students. ELT textbook
writers should include an attitude of listening, respect, and cautiousness that
is informed by an understanding of the violence taught by material and cultural
plunder of non-Europeans by the West. In addition, English has been taught using the guide
of well-known language textbooks without having in mind those textbook contents
can have high levels of superficial cultural components which are displayed to
teach English as an instrument of a dominant cultural reproduction. Moreover,
teachers, students, and institutions favor socio-cultural resources that
facilitate not only linguistic interaction but also cultural exchanges in a
standardized, homogenized, decontextualized, and meaningless view of the world
(Austin, 2010).
These criteria advocate other contextualized
materials informed by locally emerging content and methods that are sensitive
to cultural diversity, without omissions, distortions, or biases, favoring the
development of politically and culturally aware subjects following their
origin, social status, gender, age, creed, identities, and capacities (Magne et al, 2019; Tollefson, 1995). By the same thought, Nuñez-Pardo (2020)
calls for students’ and teachers’ resistance to hegemony, a search for their
critical sociopolitical awareness, a committed agency, and a generation of
local knowledge, so that subaltern what she calls the “contextualization destabilizes mainstream
ways of developing standardized, homogenized, decontextualized and meaningless
materials” (p. 19).
Some studies have revealed the
use of ELT textbooks as the curriculum as Alvarez (2008) states “It is common
to see text publishing conglomerates offering teacher-proof training programs,
promoting the traditional one-size-fits-all methodological model, and
commercializing educational materials like textbooks and software” (p. 7). In
other words, textbooks intend to be an operationalization of the curriculum,
and both teachers and textbook writers largely agree that textbooks must adhere
to the guidelines given in the curriculum. Magne et al
(2019) inductively generated five mutually exclusive categories of explanations
and arguments for absence presented in textbooks and in the curriculums which
are tight to what writers present in the ELT textbook: 1. Disability was
overlooked by textbook writers (unconscious omission) 2. Textbook writers did
not find discourses of disability, feminism, gender, and multiculturalism
explicitly mentioned in curriculums. 3. Textbook writers struggled to find good
texts about disability and gender. 4. Textbook authors found disability, feminism,
gender, and multiculturalism to be irrelevant to their subject(s). 5. Textbook
writers considered disability, feminism, gender, and multiculturalism to be
sensitive and difficult topics to cover in the textbooks, as a result, most of
them use standardized topics.
Indeed, English as a service
or a product which has risen of a financially lucrative publishing industry
with the only objective to attract a larger, and more international market
promotes the representation of the world of work in textbooks by ELT writers,
the writers evolve discourses of business and money matters, in other words,
the new capitalism. Furthermore, writers must embody neoliberal values such as
individualism, aspiration, affluence, consumerism, self-branding, and mobility
with discourses of entrepreneurialism and constant self-improvement. When the ELT Textbook writer wants to propose
a particular suggested curriculum against domination, oriented against the epistemic and cultural
violence of Eurocentrism that underlies the politics of content and knowledge
in education, committed to building global reflection based on non-dominative
principles that have characterized colonialism and Eurocentrism in the
textbooks and cultural plunder of non-European by the West, they are confronted
by the industry to replicate models of globalization (Austin, 2010; Gray, 2010b; Shelagh, 2013; Shyan, 2015).
The ELT textbook writer
critical cultural views struggle with the Westernization thought from the
publishing industries as being known by the pervasive and accelerating
influence across the world in the last few centuries, assuming westernization
to be the equivalent of modernization, which is related to the process of
acculturation or enculturation, regarding the changes occur within a society or
culture and the effects of western expansion and colonialism on native
societies. More recently authors have mentioned there is no harm in taking good
things from the west, but this does not mean that one should completely adopt
it and pretend to be western and misrepresent our own identity ( Nesavathy, 2017; Pennycook, 2003
). The ELT publisher keeps ELT textbooks hidden from the views they want to use
in their textbooks, they provide writers with sets of guidelines regarding
content. As Gray (2010), and Gabler (2008) state as inclusive language and
inappropriate language, Gray (2010), refers to the need for a non-sexist
approach in which women and men are presented in the textbook, and on the other
hand, Gabler (2008), refers to those topics that writers are advised to avoid
so as not to offend the perceived sensibilities of potential buyers and users.
These representations address the learners as consumers and have a high
potential risk of stereotyping, they also can portray gender stereotypes in
which the social role of males is more predominantly presented compared to its
female counterpart in both visualizations and written texts. In doing so, the
writers and publishers may also watch against including cultural
representations that legitimate (intentioned) colonial or neo-colonial practices
when they just follow what is framed by the industry, going against the
policies creates a conflict as I have stated before because the ELT textbook
can disappear as the prestigious academic houses usually promote with extended
and aggressive advertising campaigns to compete with locally produced
materials.
Not only World Englishes but also English as a lingua franca have
determined a shift in perspective in the overall approach to English language
teaching, and how far this shift has permeated the way the ELT writers create
materials that contribute to the reinforcement of ideologies of
native-speakerism and language standards in which EFL learners have not been
exposed to the teaching of English that addresses the colonial past and
postcolonial present of the language and the powerful inequality as a result of
its spread, The ELT textbook writer who is subjected to the industry contribute
to the construction of imagined communities available to the learners and
teachers, thus potentially limiting their visions as to what may constitute an
English-speaking world in their mind, privilege conduits for hegemonic social
discourses, rather than as agents who initiate or subvert (Cortez, 2008; Hurst,
2014; Keles & Yazan, 2020; Tyarakanita
et al, 2021).
And eventually,
the ELT textbook writer’s community as a subaltern community tries to disrupt
the hegemonic power structure given by the publishing houses, they suggest
after the books are almost done some extra material can be adapted to the
students’ needs, this is mainly the option open to decolonize the market
demands. Furthermore, the ELT textbook writers from the periphery countries
lack what is called ‘’intellectual elaboration’’ which means inadequate
speaking skills, learners' low language proficiency, lack of proper teacher
training, and cultural dispositions that constrain the dominant model for
official language teaching policies that the ELT textbook big publishing
industries offer as rhetoric Anglo-American and European reproduction of
cultural models. What is more, ELT writers chose not to update the textbook to
respond to the research scholarship that argues that English has become the
language of all cultures and communities. This choice perpetuates the European
and North American cultures as the dominant ideological orientation shaping the
representation of the imagined world of English. In that train of thought, the
concept of publishing industries replicates the model of one culture-one langue
has attended to the proliferation, appropriation, and regionalization of Englishes and questioned the ELT textbook writer's
ownership of English in the role of resisting the marketed world (Kumaravadivelu, 2016, Noah, 2010, Simonsen, 2019; Trujeque, 2015).
A concluding remark
In this review, I intended to
show different worldwide academic development views on how the ELT textbook
writers have been struggled and subjected to the publishing industry and how
the publishing industry continues replicating the same framework to produce
materials in an unconscious or conscious position. A writer whose configuration
of the subject is determined in three dimensions: knowledge, power, and
subjectivation, being the latter a sociocultural and historical process by
which an individual becomes a subject within a particular context (Foucault,
1999). In which I traced how the ELT
textbooks writers try to achieve a more balanced view of the world, but the
market and the editors do not allow them to achieve what they consider should
be in the textbooks based on their experience on personal thoughts and based on
their academic back groups having in mind the specific context and student’s
needs.
I want to finish by quoting
Lee (2011) ‘‘language education is a complex social practice, is not neutral;
it conveys ideas, cultures, and ideologies embedded in and related to the
language’’ (P. 12) This is especially the case here considering that the idea
of creating material not only examine the linguistic levels but also on a
broader social and political level. Furthermore, the manifestation of power
which is presented as a very neutral world in the ELT textbooks which are far
from the reality of language communication, writers do not provide sufficient
exposure to language, and do not provide enough opportunities for the learners
to use the language themselves, and narrow the learners' opportunities, but
probably the biggest objection is ELT textbook writer cater for a very large
market of international publishing houses.
This paper set out to unveil how the free market forces of competition imposed, the cosmopolitanism
in which relative prosperity and privilege founded ideas. In this sense, the ELT
textbooks are linked to the state-controlled economies and polities which are
mired in bureaucracy, inefficiency, and nepotism. For instance, the gap to
break the new colonial power in this dual economy, the issues in which
educators and learners connect with cultural differences and social
discrimination, the problems of inclusion and exclusion, dignity, humiliation,
respect, and repudiation (Bhabha,1995. p. 23).
In closing, the three trends mentioned notice a
fertile terrain to understand the publishing machinery and how it subjects the
subject writer and possibilities others for countries in the quest for
decoloniality. Moreover, the ELT textbook writer can be the path into
power-resistance practices from English teachers and institutions as the ELT
writer can trace the terrain of the resistance and creates the possibility of
thinking new ways of teaching and learning English, the possibility of
integrating local knowledge, repress western culture power, hegemony,
exclusion, discrimination, and oppression as well as include resistance,
independence, and inclusion in the ELT textbooks. Thus, the writer is the autonomous creator of the text,
making the text exclusive property of the writer’’ (Zhang, 2018, p. 07 ).
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