Do coursebooks favor interculturality in the English classroom?

Resumen

Kumaravadivelu1 (2014) claims that, in the field of English Language Teaching, dominant hegemonic forces exercise power in an invisible manner, imposing center-based methods and center-based materials that conceive contemporary societies as characterized by processes of globalization and interculturality. These models tend to blur the cultural processes and idiosyncratic characteristics that define ways of learning and understanding knowledge that are inherent to specific communities. In this view, coursebooks are tools that introduce linguistic, pedagogic and social frameworks that may inhibit teachers from developing their own personal teaching styles, as well as pedagogies that are appropriate to their contexts.The research project Legitimando perspectivas y prácticas locales II: El papel de los libros de texto en la tarea docente y en el desarrollo del sentido de agencia de profesores de inglés(UNMDP), aims at analysing the pedagogic models proposed in coursebooks used to teach English in our local context, and inquiring into the influence that those models may have in our classrooms. This presentation explores the extent to which interculturality, as the processes of interrelations and communication of knowledge and values among different cultural groups seen as equal, is favored or hindered in coursebooks.