Exploring Local textbook writers’ argumentations and EFL teachers’ classroom negotiations of gender stereotypes represented in one Algerian English language textbook (MBE1): Social Justice Perspective

Abstract

This is the first qualitative research that explores gender stereotypes represented in one recently and locally published Algerian English language textbook (MBE1), triangulating it with textbook writers’ perspectives and teachers’ negotiation approach in the classroom. A set of data gathering tools are employed: textbook analysis, textbook writers’ online semi-structured interviews, teachers’ background reflection questionnaires, audio-recorded classroom observations, field-notes, and follow-up interviews. Critical discourse analysis and a combination of analytical frameworks are used for data analysis. The key findings highlight the tendency of promoting the patriarchal ideology in the MBE1 textbook, disempowering women, and strengthening the essentialist ways of being and becoming as ideal practices in the contemporary Algerian society. The notion of ‘multimodal disambiguation’ was explained in the textual analysis data, showing how ambiguous linguistic constructions embody gender stereotypes when they are read multimodally. Drawing on Reisigl and Wolak’s (2001) ‘argumentation theory’, the interviewed textbook writers found fully aware of the gender stereotypes constructed in the MBE1 textbook and attributed them directly to the socio-cultural, economic, and pedagogical factors while indirectly stating political factors. Additionally, the teacher-participants found negotiating differently and unpredictably (either and/or endorse ignore, subvert) the gender stereotypes constructed in the MBE1 textbook, using a set of pedagogical approaches such as read-aloud, repetition, dialogic discussions and translanguaging pedagogies. The analysis also demonstrated that when teachers critically negotiated gender stereotypes in the classroom through translanguaging pedagogies, students were given opportunities or three social spaces (cognitive, linguistic, and physical) to voice out their gender views and construct an oppositional or a resisting negotiation to the teachers’ gender discourse. Thus, I argue that classrooms are social sites where teachers and students bring their gender beliefs to negotiate the patriarchal ideology represented in the foreign language textbook.
Based on these main conclusions, several implications are suggested for policymakers, teacher education, and researchers.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Aude Campmas: orcid.org/0000-0001-6662-2476

ORCID for Adriana Patino: orcid.org/0000-0003-1950-3954

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