Constructing Gender and Sexuality in the EFL Classroom in Poland: Textbook Construction and Classroom Negotiation?

Abstract

Poland, as a young conservative democracy, is witnessing an unprecedented amount of public debate where 'gender' and 'sexuality' figure prominently. Both, however, tend to be perceived as foreign imports and thus fiercely contested. Consequently, the role of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) materials as well as teachers as potential mediators of markedly different Anglophone socio-politics is of paramount importance.What is more, the only Polish research examining the portrayal of women in EFL materials is that by Jaworski (1986), who exposed the abundance of sexism in EFL textbooks available in Poland at that time. Regrettably, 'sexuality' as a culturally (but not linguistically) important identity category was not addressed or recognised in the broad Polish educational context until 2012 (Świerszcz 2012). This chapter reports on two studies conducted as part of the research project entitled "Investigating Gender and Sexuality in the ESL classroom: Raising publishers', teachers' and students' awareness". The aim of the first study was to qualitatively scrutinize the discursive and multimodal construction of gender, gender relations, and sexuality in two leading illustrated Primary School EFL textbooks in Poland, along with the accompanying workbooks and teacher's books. To this end the analytical methods of