Global Perspectives on Language Education Policies

Representations of gender in learning materials convey an implicit message to students about attitudes towards culturally appropriate gender roles for women and men. This collection takes a linguistic approach to exploring theories about gender representation within the sphere of education and textbooks, and their effects on readers and students within an international context.

In the opening section, contributors discuss theories of representation and effect, challenging the conventional Althusserian model of interpellation, and acknowledging the challenges of applying Western feminist models within an international context. Following chapters provide detailed analyses focusing on a number of different countries: Australia, Japan, Brazil, Finland, Russia, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Germany, Qatar, Tanzania, and Poland. Through linguistic analysis of vocabulary associated with women and men, content analysis of what women and men say in textbooks, and discourse analysis of the types of linguistic moves associated with women and men, contributors evaluate the extent to which gendered representations in textbooks perpetuate stereotypical gender roles, what the impact may be on learners, and the ways that both teachers and learners interact and engage with these texts.

Introduction Abolaji S. Mustapha and Sara Mills Part I: Theories of Representation in Relation to Textbooks 1. Gender Representation in Learning Materials Abolaji S. Mustapha and Sara Mills 2. Gender (Representation) in Foreign Language Textbooks: Avoiding Pitfalls and Moving On Jane Sunderland Part II: Textual Analysis 3. Gender Representation in Hong Kong Primary English-Language Textbooks: A Corpus Study Jackie Lee and Peter Collins 4. Innocent Maths? Gender Representations in German Maths Books Christine Ott 5. Gender Representations in EFL Textbooks in Turkey Ebru Bag and Yasemin Bayyurt 6. Gender Stereotyping and Linguistic Sexism in Qatari Teaching Materials Zohreh Eslami, Sunni Sonnenburg, Wei-Hong Ko, Fatma Hasan, and Fuhui Tong Part III: Beyond the Text 7. Textual Representations and Transformation in Teacher Masculinity Rosyln Appleby 8. Finnish Teachers Exploring Gender Bias in School Textbooks Liisa Tainio and Ulla Karvonen 9. Gender Positioning through Visual Images in English Language Textbooks in Nigeria Abolaji S. Mustapha 10. Gender Socialization through Literary Texts: A Study of Two Folk Tales Used in a Russian Preschool Ekaterina Moore 11. Constructing Gender and Sexuality in the EFL Classroom in Poland: Textbook Construction and Classroom Negotiation? Lukasz Pakula and Joanna Pawelczyk