The Analysis of EFL Teachers’ Attitudes on ELT Textbooks in Iran: The Case of Gender Representation and its Pedagogical Effects

This study aimed to investigate the attitudes of English language teachers regarding the representation of gender in the Vision series in the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades of senior high schools in Iran. To gather data, a questionnaire was adapted from Yaqoubi Notash and Nouri (2016) and some items were added to meet the purpose of the study. It should be noted that this questionnaire was translated to Farsi to enhance the participants’ understanding with a reliability of .88 whose validity was confirmed by experts. Then, the questionnaire was distributed among 330 male and female teachers who had experienced teaching the mentioned textbooks. To obtain more accurate data, a semi-structured interview was also designed and implemented with 15 teachers. The data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of the analyses of the questionnaire and teachers' interviews showed that the majority of the teachers believed the representation of males is significantly more than females’ in the textbooks which might be due to the traditional patriarchal and cultural views in this country. In addition, the teachers assumed that gender disparitycreates gender stereotypes in the minds of the students affecting their future academic and career choices and leads to biased modeling of the genders’ social roles. The results of the present study can raise the awareness of the materials developers, curriculum designers, and those who are involved in devising textbooks considering gender inequality and representation.