Researching Cultural Knowledge and Values in English Language Teaching Textbooks: Representation, Multimodality, and Stakeholders

Abstract

This introductory chapter maps out the field of research on cultural knowledge and values by focusing on three main themes, i.e., representation, multimodality, and stakeholders. It first overviews the relevant research literature on the representation of cultural content in English language teaching (ELT) materials with regard to theoretical rationales, main issues, and methodological orientations. It is argued that this field is an interdisciplinary project that draws on a number of theoretical and thematic perspectives such as critical curriculum studies, critical applied linguistics, cultural politics of English, political economy of textbooks, multilingualism, among others. Two general methodological orientations are identified, i.e., positivist and constructivist approaches. The chapter then sketches out the main ideas of chapters in this volume as well as how they relate to each other. It ends by calling for more innovative and integrative approaches, both conceptual and methodological, to researching cultural knowledge and values in language teaching materials.