A content analysis of English language teaching textbooks in three ASEAN countries: Apropos of a framework for construction on instructional materials for ASEAN integration

Abstract

The ASEAN socio-cultural community ensures a blueprint for concrete actions to be undertaken to promote the establishment of ASEAN socio-cultural community. This social and political climate help shape the education landscape. Textbooks as instructional material, have a vital and positive role on the campaign for mutual understanding and respect. This qualitative analysis was conducted to analyze the content of the three ASEAN countries’ textbook on the themes of One's Self in Relation to Others, Family as the Basic Structure of Society, and One's Culture in Relation to Others. The goal is to craft a framework for textbook production and revision towards ASEAN integration in education. To find out the dominant codes, discursive practices, and their comparison of the discursive practices among the three countries, the researcher made use of content analysis anchored on Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis. The corpora used in this study were the English language textbooks of Indonesia, Lao PDR, and the Philippines. The themes in the three language textbooks were pre-determined through the initial reading of the text. A line-by-line analysis of the text was done to find the frequency count of each code. The codes were interpreted vis-a-vis the various factors that impinge on textbook production and the social practices wherein the textbooks were written. The findings revealed that the three textbooks predominantly discussed their respective culture but did not or have a little discussion of the culture of other ASEAN countries. Moreover, the citizens in these countries share the same cyclical philosophy about life. Gender inequality, colonial mentality, and the extended kinship were the dominant themes. The difference among the three language textbooks lies on the content words which were found prominent. These are content words on religion and holiday, and social institutions. In line with the above-mentioned results, a framework on textbook production and revision was recommended to meet education for all goals, ASEAN integration, Intercultural Communicative Language Teaching strategies, and UNESCO goals. This framework shows that book authors of each country should consider the various factors that affect the textbook production. It is suggested that textbooks should consider fair treatment of the language, parity, equality, and egalitarian treatment of the characters. Book authors need to take into consideration the principles of the United Nations, and ASEAN as the prevailing agencies and intercultural communicative language teaching as the approach that affect content and language in general. Factors such as national identity, global citizenships, and the author's worldview are at play in the textbook production. Hence, these factors should work together for the maintenance of world peace.