Gender in the ELT classroom: The analysis of English coursebooks in the Syrian primary schools

Language is the primary tool in any educational process, and course books are the mainstay of the educational material. The importance of studying course books includes studying the attitudes and opinions presented implicitly or explicitly in the material as well as the content. This thesis aimed to assess whether the Syrian Ministry of Education has developed English course books which are considered a part of the curriculum, reflect gender equality and establish the patterns of gender representation in English course books. Both qualitative and quantitative in equal research methods as a mixed method were used for collection and analysis of the data. For the purpose of data collection, the researcher adopted the tool used in the research by Bilgin (2013) and used the manual coding system to code each category according to the codes. The study analysed four English language course books published between the years 2021 and 2022 for local Syrian primary school students using language tools at the textual level, such as matching, keywords in context, and visual content. Results indicated that there was a male superiority in gender representation, and the content was also gender-biased which led to unrealistic stereotypical impressions. This study is relatively significant since it contributes to the implementation of a curriculum that promotes gender equality in Syria.