The invisible reality: English teaching materials and the formation of gender and sexually oriented stereotypes (with a focus on primary education)

  • Silvia Pellicer Ortín University of Zaragoza
  • Alicia Asín Abad
Keywords: gender and sexually oriented stereotypes, gender awareness, EFL teaching, English textbooks
Agencies: DGA, MINECO, FEDER

Abstract

Gender stereotypes, understood as those structured sets of beliefs about personal attributes of women and men, have a great influence over self-perspective and the social interaction and organisation. However, their effects are sometimes invisible, and a great effort should be made to develop awareness of their influence in the population. Our main claim is that School has an essential role to teach gender and sexual equality through the curricula, using teaching materials that are free of these stereotypes. The main aim of this study is to examine the presence of gender and sexually oriented stereotypes in various English teaching materials within the context of the Spanish Primary School, focusing on its last stage. This research carries out a qualitative and quantitative analysis of three English textbooks together with the students’ and teachers’ perceptions of gender stereotypes. The analysis is done thanks to the review of key concepts, such as gender awareness and sexual identity, as well as the presentation of various examination tools that have allowed us to evaluate the sexist content in the textbooks selected and offer some guidelines to avoid them in the English classroom.

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Author Biographies

Silvia Pellicer Ortín, University of Zaragoza

Dr. Silvia Pellicer-Ortín is a Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Zaragoza. Silvia’s main research interests are related to contemporary British fiction and semi-autobiographical practices, with a focus on British-Jewish women writers, and Trauma, Memory, Diaspora, Gender and Women Studies. She is the author several articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed academic journals (Atlantis, 2011, 2017; Comparative Critical Studies, 2012; Humanities, 2015) and publishing houses (Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Rodopi). In 2015 she published a monograph entitled Eva Figes' Writings: A Journey through Trauma (Cambridge Scholars Publishing); she has just co-edited a collection on Memory Frictions in Contemporary Narratives in English together with Dr. María Jesús Martínez Alfaro (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); and she is co-editing now another collection of essays, with Dr. Julia Tofantshuk, on Women on the Move: Diasporic Bodies, Diasporic Memories. Constructing Femininity in the Transitional and Transnational Era in Contemporary Narratives in English. She is also very much involved in questions concerning innovative teaching methods in high education and the development of bilingual programmes.

Alicia Asín Abad

Alicia graduated as an Elementary School teacher at the University of Zaragoza in 2016 after defending her undergraduate dissertation with honours. She is currently living in the United Kingdom and working at St Angela’s Ursuline School in London while she completes a Master’s Degree in Special Educational Needs at the Open University of Catalonia. Her main research interests have to do with feminist pedagogies, gender approaches to education as well as she is interested in innovation and good teaching practices in the EFL classroom.

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Published
2018-11-13
How to Cite
Pellicer Ortín S. y Asín Abad A. (2018). The invisible reality: English teaching materials and the formation of gender and sexually oriented stereotypes (with a focus on primary education). Complutense Journal of English Studies, 26, 165-191. https://doi.org/10.5209/CJES.56533
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Articles