Critical Interculturality and EFL Textbooks: Examining the Tensions

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the relationship between critical interculturality and textbooks for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL). To achieve this, I analysed 94 documents, including articles, dissertations, and book chapters published in several national and international databases in the period from 2013 to 2023. The review of these studies also serves as a means to understand how different scholars have analysed textbooks in their contexts. This article is derived from a doctoral study that stems from my personal and professional interests. The research presents seven tensions that reveal traditional ways of analysing textbooks over decades, the need for deeper critical intercultural views, biased cultural and intercultural representations, uncritical literacy practices, coloniality of being, bilingual policy hegemony, and controlled evaluation, selection, and use of EFL textbooks. All this means that there is a need to consider critical interculturality as an attempt to decolonize traditional ways of teaching at different educational levels of education. The result of this analysis further suggests a research gap regarding critical interculturality and EFL textbooks.