An Evaluation of the English Language Teaching Textbooks within the Context of Culture of Thinking

Abstract

The sociocultural approach has recently been focused on teaching thinking skills and considering the rapidly changing information age and lifelong learning skills, it can be said that culture-based thinking instruction has become more popular. The literature illustrates few but various studies regarding the contribution of the culture of thinking in different projects. In that vein, this study seeks to examine English Language Teaching (ELT) Moonlight 8th grade students’ book and workbook which were distributed by the Ministry of National Education and taught in state schools within the context of the culture for thinking. The target textbooks were analyzed through document analysis in the framework of qualitative research designs. Tishman, Perkins, and Jay (1995)’s framework of the culture of thinking was taken as a basis for examining the target textbooks regarding culture of thinking and main themes have been shaped. The findings of the study concluded that along with the activities supporting the culture of thinking in regard to the language of thinking, mental management, strategic attitude, and transfer, various activities and activity expressions were emphasized to have a risk to overshadow the findings of supporting the culture of thinking.