Abstract
The emphasis of this research was religious otherness depiction in high school English textbooks issued by four State controlled Pakistani textbook boards of i.e., BTB Quetta, STB Jamshoro, KTB Peshawar and PTB Lahore. It besets a broad contrast among the religious otherness descriptions as depicted in provincial ELT textbooks and the otherness related notions of their corresponding students. To achieve the goals, the study was alienated in 2 phases: In phase 1, the textbooks of government textbook publishing boards were investigated and in the second phase their corresponding readers’ religious otherness ideas were obtained and evaluated. The research devised a modified model of analysis by blending Van Dijk (1998) and Fairclough (2001) CDA model for interpretation and explanation of religious otherness in representative text extracted from textbooks’ discourse. The study discovered the prevalence of religious otherness- related themes in all ELT textbooks. It was also found that STB discourse had improved religious otherness images and students’ otherness ideas than other provincial textbook boards and their respective readers. The study also revealed that Muslim male and female students had peculiar otherness notions about minority religious communities. The readers’ responses to questionnaire items in phase 2 of research suggested that textbooks had a significant part in molding otherness related notions of young readers. The study recommended an otherness-based investigation of the textbooks prior to publication at federal government level to ensure citizenship equality as envisioned by founder of the nation.
Highlights
The school is an important Ideological State Apparatus (Althuser, 1970)
This study targeted at investigating the type of religious otherness related discourse portrayed in the high school ELT textbooks distributed by Pakistan’s four state-run provincial textbook boards
One of its purposes was to match the types of religious otherness related depiction explicitly and implicitly embedded in four different prescribed ELT textbooks distributed by government sponsored provincial textbook boards and obtaining religious otherness related views of student readers of corresponding textbooks
Summary
The school is an important Ideological State Apparatus (Althuser, 1970). Any education system hinges on some curriculum and learning objectives. A hidden curriculum, according to Miller and Seller (1990), denotes unexpressed and implicit values, behaviors and norms in an education environment. Cornbleth (1984) found that there are different elements that impact to shape the hidden curriculum, such as teachers, students, society, knowledge, and awareness. Students are put at disadvantage or embarrassing situations with their classmates in the classroom since they are not aware about the goal and rules of the hidden curriculum. Hidden curriculum is all the “unstated norms, values, and beliefs embedded in and transmitted to students through the underlying rules that structure the routines and social relationships in school and classroom life” (Giroux, 2001). The nature of embedded themes or ideologies may vary from culture to culture
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