Vision 2

This study sought to evaluate the usefulness and desirability of the English textbooks for Iranian second grade students in senior high school, Vision 2. To this end, the extent to which the textbooks materials satisfy the prescribed curriculum was explored based on Littlejohn’s (2011) evaluative framework. Employing stratified random sampling, a total of 12 private and public senior high schools (six girl students and six boy students) were selected randomly among all the schools located in the six education districts in Isfahan. To select the teacher participants, a convenience sampling method was employed and those who agreed to be surveyed took part in the study. The 20 teachers who participated in this study have been teaching Vision 2 since the beginning of 2017 fall. The process of the content analysis deals with a deeply analytical content evaluation based on a framework containing different parts (objective description analysis, subjective analysis, subjective inference) done by a teacher committee. The results revealed that there is a need to adapt the materials to the target situation of use. Such adaptation needs to cover both design- and publication-oriented aspects of the materials. As a practical implication, the findings may urge the developers of the textbooks to launch a modification project relying upon the results of the systematic phase, therefore, it may enrich English teaching and learning material in Iranian high schools.

English textbooks can be the frontiers of Second Language (L2) and world views for English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners. This qualitative study aimed to uncover how pictures of Iranian-published English textbooks represent identities in terms of gender, race, and nation. To this end, an intersectional lens was employed for analyzing the English textbook Vision 2 taught in Iranian high school as the subject of the study. Analysis of visual data, using the models proposed by Nelson (2019) and Zarza (2018), indicated that Vision 2 failed to offer a successful and realistic representation of gender, race, and nation for EFL learners. Insufficient representations of female characters, different races, and nations were the most prominent findings of the present research. This study provided some explanations and suggestions for the following revision of EFL textbooks.