The language textbook: representation, interaction and learning

ABSTRACT

This guest-edited Special Issue of Language, Culture and Curriculum presents a collection of studies that look into language textbooks through three key themes: representation, interaction and learning. The full issue considers textbooks produced in different parts of the world, for different audiences (in terms of geographical location, age and level of proficiency), for the teaching of several languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish) with different statuses (first, second and foreign language education). This diversity of contexts, texts and users allows us to find recurrent issues and patterns around the world and, at the same time, situate other issues locally for a richer qualitative understanding of the phenomena under investigation. Contributions provide new insight into the interconnectedness of these three key themes (representation, interaction and learning) and what the research field might gain from exploring all three in an articulated manner. They also expand our understanding of the textbook as an educational, cultural, pedagogical and ideological site for research. Discussions, findings and implications appeal not only to researchers but also to language teachers, language textbook publishers and other stakeholders.

KEYWORDS:

• Textbooks
• foreign language teaching
• language education
• international languages
• cultural content
• multilingualism

This guest-edited Special Issue of Language, Culture and Curriculum presents a collection of studies that look into language textbooks through three key themes: representation, interaction and learning. There is a relatively long-standing tradition of research in the broad interdisciplinary field of textbook studies (Fucks & Bock, 2018). In particular, language researchers in applied linguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cultural studies, among others, have –sometimes explicitly and other times implicitly engaged in this field by exploring first, second and foreign language textbooks. While we still need more articulation between language textbook studies and the study of textbooks of other school subjects,¹ language textbook studies have certainly provided insightful contributions on critical aspects of textbooks, their contents and discourses.

Representation has been a key issue in language textbook studies (Canale, 2016) and it has been addressed from many theoretical perspectives, as a recent book by Risager (2018) eloquently explains. The study of representations is fundamental since what is (verbally, visually) included and excluded in the textbook plays a role in how ideas, conceptions and cosmogonies about the target language, society and culture are virtually transmitted. In their socio-cognitive dimension, representations can operate in different ways, guiding students’ semiotic processes and contributing to the reinforcement, establishment or even the contestation of ideas, concepts, stereotypes or prejudice. Most of the research about language textbooks address representations in one way or another. These include varied phenomena such as: social and cultural representations (Curdt-Christiansen, 2008; Kramsch, 1987; Kubota, 2003; Larrea-Espinar, 2015; Thompson, 2013; Weninger & Kiss, 2013), ideologies of global/local languages and cultures (Curdt-Christiansen, 2015; Leeman & Martínez, 2007; Thompson, 2013), hegemonic socio-political discourses (Babaii & Sheikhi, 2017; Block & Gray, 2018; Bori, 2018; Bori & Petanović, 2016; Gray, 2012; Xiong, 2012), sociolinguistic diversity and identities (Elissondo, 2001; Shardakova & Pavlenko, 2004; Xu, 2013), (inter)cultural awareness and (global) citizenship (McConachy, 2018; Risager, 2018; Vinall & Shin, 2019). A look at the principles and motivations of most of these studies reveals some overarching questions in the analysis of representations: How is textbook discourse designed and organized? What types of representations does it favour (over others)? What type of knowledge or understanding of the social, cultural and linguistic world does it promote? Who are represented as legitimate speakers and interlocutors? Who are represented as carriers of the culture/s and as legitimate users of the language? Who is represented as legitimate learners? What social, cultural and political ideologies are at play in these representations?

Despite the key role textual representations have played in language textbooks studies, it is important to note that there were early calls for the need to attend to other phenomena in order to better situate the textbook in (inter)action (van Dijk, 1981; Kramsch, 1987). The underlying motivation is the belief that the study of textbook representations is more informative of the politics of power in/behind (textbook) discourse production than of the situated agency of students and teachers interacting with the textbook in actual classrooms. To be sure, this is not a call for less research on representations but for more research on the articulation of representation and other social/semiotic practices, such as interaction and learning. To this point, we shall return in more detail in the Conclusion paper.

With the exception of a few pioneer early studies -such as Canagarajah (1993) – publications on language textbook interaction and learning are relatively new. In a broad sense, these include issues such as how teachers and students interact with the language textbook in the classroom, enacting their identities in expected/unexpected or official/unofficial ways; and also the role of the language textbook in actual learning and learning contexts (Canale, 2019; Foreman, 2014; Hadley, 2013; McConachy, 2018; Menkabu & Harwood, 2014). Articulating representation, interaction and learning is key to providing answers to questions such as: How do textbook discourse and representations circulate in the classroom? How do teachers and students interact with the textbook? How do they position themselves toward textbook discourse? To what extent do they negotiate textbook representations? What strategies do they deploy to do so? How do they respond to the ways in which they are positioned by the textbook as teachers and learners? As argued earlier, these questions point to the interplay of structural power and situated agency.

In this Special Issue, rather than providing fixed definitions of the three key themes, each paper draws on different theories, perspectives and approaches to conceptualise representation, interaction and/or learning in particular ways. In the concluding paper, these views are brought together and further articulated in order to reflect on our collective contribution as well as the perspectives for future research.

The Special Issue considers textbooks produced in different parts of the world, for different audiences (in terms of geographical location, age and level of proficiency), for the teaching of several languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish) with different statuses (first, second and foreign language education). This diversity of contexts, texts and users allows us to find recurrent issues and patterns around the world and, at the same time, situate other issues locally for a richer qualitative understanding of the phenomena under investigation.

In the first article, Risager draws on five different theoretical approaches to the study of culture and society (National Studies, Citizenship Education Studies, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Transnational Studies) to discuss how each approach implies a particular orientation to research questions and analyses, as well as to the study of how culture is represented in foreign language textbooks. She analyses data of textbooks for English, German, French and Spanish, all of them taught in Denmark. Risager focuses on representations of ‘the world’, as opposed to a long-standing tradition of research focusing on countries or national aspects of representations in foreign language textbooks. By focusing on ‘the world’ or ‘the planet’ she shows us that any verbal or visual representation –no matter how fragmented or partial– is always achieving two simultaneous tasks: implicitly or explicitly defining ‘the world’ and telling us something about it.

In the second article, Weninger explores how to incorporate multimodality (both as a theoretical construct and as an analytical tool) in language textbook studies. As she explains, in the past years there has been a growing interest in the use of multimodality for analysing /understanding language textbooks, their contents and discourses. Weninger argues that most of these studies have focused on representation while others on the interaction between modes, or intermodal relations in the construal of representational meanings. In light of this, she delineates the scope and limitations of each strand of research, calling for more attention to interaction in a broader sense, as the interpersonal relations with the learners as imagined or shaped by the textbook. Her contribution helps us understand how and to what purposes we can lean on theoretical constructs and analytical tools from the field of multimodality for textbook analysis. Conclusions cast light on a blur line in textbook research: the difference between textbook analysis as curriculum critique and as pedagogy critique.

In the third article, Curdt-Christiansen examines a topic of unquestionable relevance in our current times and that certainly needs further attention in language education: environmental literacy. She analyses six Chinese language textbooks used in elementary school education in China. The author draws on intertextuality (in terms of thematic, orientational and organisational discursive relations) to study how environmental issues and contents are presented in the textbooks. Her findings point to a sort of modularisation of content: textbooks have a unit for environmental issues but the topic itself does not recur throughout the rest of the textbook. They also point to issues of learning and socialisation through textbooks, since environmental awareness is constructed institutionally and attitudes to the environment are ideologically motivated and developed. Her critical stance comes at a timely juncture as environmental issues are the current site of ideological, political and educational debates around the world.

In the fourth article, Xiong and Peng draw on critical social semiotics to look into cultural values related to education in two sets of Chinese as a Second Language textbooks published in China. The authors not only analyse these values as verbal and visual representations of Chinese culture, but they also attend to the ways in which the semiotic modes of writing and image interact in three different ways: referential/illustrative relations, referential/linguistic relations and denotational relations. In identifying and exploring each of these relations, Xiong and Peng find interesting differences in how each textbook constructs cultural representations. Their analysis also reveals that these three ways in which semiotic modes interact in the textbook are not merely ways of representing culture but also ways of positioning and pedagogically addressing learners.

In the fifth article, Bori draws on critical ethnography to explore the beliefs and actions of teachers and students in two English as Foreign Language (EFL) classes in regards to the global textbook they use. His focus is on how participants encapsulate neoliberal ideologies in EFL instruction. Here, the question is not only about representations and how they are constructed by the textbook, but what role these representations play in reinforcing neoliberal ideologies of and in language learning. While most EFL classroom studies focus on middle-class university students, his research sites are two classes for unemployed adults in Serbia, a former communist country. In this context in which students are jobless, their interests and motivations for foreign language learning differ greatly from the typical ‘privilege position’. Along these lines, his findings tell us about the anxieties, frustrations and insecurities that come with no ‘fitting’ in the scheme of hegemonic language learning discourses about professional development and personal success.

The concluding article synthesises the contributions of each paper and combines them into a new whole in order to discuss both what the state of art in the field of language textbook studies is and to identify research gaps and areas for future research. This discussion is structured after the three key themes (representation, interaction and learning). In articulating issues of representation, interaction and learning, this Special Issue collectively offers a global and comprehensive understanding of the broadening scope of language textbook research, as well as of the various theoretical perspectives and methods for engaging in this type of analysis. At the same time, it provides new insight into the interconnectedness of these three key themes and what the research field might gain from exploring all three in an articulated manner. Contributions expand our understanding of the textbook as an educational, cultural, pedagogical and ideological site for research. More broadly, they contribute to language education theory and praxis since discussions and findings appeal not only to researchers but also to language teachers, language textbook publishers and other stakeholders.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for instance, Harwood’s (2016) comments on English as a Foreign Language and ‘mainstream education’ textbook studies.