Evaluation of english language coursebooks in türki̇ye regarding 21st-century skills and bloom's taxonomy

Adopting a qualitative methodology, the present study addresses the gap in the literature on English language coursebook evaluation and 21st-century skills by evaluating four high school English language coursebooks developed and supplied by the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE). The evaluation focused on the presence and distribution of the 4 C skills (i.e., creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication) as well as the six cognitive skills of Bloom's revised Taxonomy (i.e., remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create). Accordingly, two checklists were developed to code the activities in the coursebooks according to these skills. The analysis revealed that while all four coursebooks included the 4 C skills and the six cognitive skills of Bloom's revised Taxonomy, their distribution was uneven. Findings regarding 4 C skills showed that creativity was the least emphasized skill, followed by critical thinking. Collaboration was moderately represented, whereas communication was the most emphasized skill. In other words, the 4 C skills were not equally represented across and within the coursebooks, with creativity consistently underrepresented throughout. Regarding the six cognitive skills of Bloom's revised Taxonomy, the skills remember, understand, and apply were the most prevalent in the coursebooks, while the skills analyze, evaluate, and create were relatively underrepresented. Similar to the findings of 4 C skills, the six cognitive skills were not equally distributed across or within the coursebooks. Findings are discussed and interpreted with comparison of those of earlier studies. The study concludes with suggestions for future studies and implications for coursebook developers and educators. Keywords: English language teaching, Coursebook evaluation, 21st-century Skills, 4 Cs, Bloom's Taxonomy