Twenty-eighth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

This qualitative documentary research reveals findings from a critical analysis of six EFL textbooks written by Colombian authors and published by both local and foreign publishing houses. To complement the analysis four local authors, six teachers, and two experts were interviewed. Content analysis as a research method, framed within the socio-critical paradigm, the qualitative approach, and the documentary research, was used to articulate the analysis of the information. Findings evinced that EFL textbooks, due to the influence of globalisation and neoliberalism, continues presenting colonial traces in the representation of gender, races, sexual orientations, capacities, and social classes; besides, references to congratulatory, superficial, and monolithic culture prevail in EFL textbooks. The analysis also revealed emerging traces of decoloniality in the regulation pattern in one of the textbooks analysed that responds to the country’s bilingual policy of teaching English for citizens’ academic quality and professional development, although oriented towards competitiveness, productivity, profitability, and globalisation; and in the pattern of having the English textbook developed by local authors, but with the advisory or consulting services from a foreign publishing house.