Occupation and Gender Stereotypes in Primary School: The Case of the English Language Coursebooks in Greek Primary Schools

Abstract

This research refers to gender stereotypes, which exist in English language coursebooks in Greek primary schools and the possible influence these stereotypes may exert on the choice and development of an individual's career. After conducting a content analysis on the Primary School's English language coursebooks, the results prove the existence of gender stereotypes mainly in the 5 th and 6 th grade coursebooks. The references and pictures, which show male performing certain occupations obviously outnumber the ones depicting female occupations. Furthermore, in the coursebooks, there are stereotypical ideas such as: manual occupations which are ruled by men, while occupations which relate to education and care are performed by women. Moreover, an attempt was made to triangulate this research with semi-structured interviews, which were conducted to English language teachers. According to the English language teachers' experiences, the existence of gender stereotypes on occupation is evident in the English language coursebooks of the 4 th ,5 th and 6 th grades, but is minimal in the textbook of the 3 rd grade. To sum up, most of the teachers, who were interviewed claim that later in life, career choice is influenced by the stereotypes which exist in the 4 th , 5 th and 6 th grade coursebooks, but only to a limited extent. According to the teachers who were interviewed, the teaching methods and approaches, which are applied by the teachers and which concern the teaching of the coursebooks and the social and family background of the students are the main factors, which influence the student and which exert a strong impact on the student's career choice.

Focused Solution Group Counseling as a Solution to Improve Career Choice Decision-making Abilities

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Gender Representation in Secondary and High School EFL Coursebooks

“…Ghajarieh and Salami (2016), found that college level students and high-level jobs such as doctors, engineers, and so on, were assigned to male characters in the secondary, high school and pre-college English course books. Similarly, EFL coursebooks were found to reflect gender stereotypes regarding jobs in a later study (Teliousi, Zafiri & Pliogou, 2020). Emilia, Moecharam and Syifa (2017) analysed transitivity in English textbooks to investigate distribution of processes between male and female agents and found that material processes were the most common type of process found and these processes were predominantly assigned to male characters than female characters, 103 and 73 respectively.…”

Analysis of Gender Images in Elementary School Mathematics Textbooks of Jiangsu Education Press

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