Inclusiveness in texts in the EFL classroom : A study of English teachers’ inclusion of different parts of the world in texts used in the lower grades

This essay investigates if texts featuring different parts of the world are present in the English as a Foreign Language classroom for grades 1-3 of Swedish primary school. The focus in the essay is to investigate what texts teachers use in the English classroom and what content the texts feature related to different parts of the world. The data was collected by a combined method of a quantitative and a qualitative study with the field of English as an International Language as an area of focus. The quantitative study consisted of an online survey which received 72 replies from primary school teachers and a case study was conducted at one school with two teachers which featured both interviews and an analysis of teaching material. The online survey shows that content featuring different parts of the world is common, even if there is a bias towards the so called Inner Circle of English speaking countries of Great Britain, USA, Australia and Canada while the rest of the world is not as commonly represented. However, this depends on the material used, as the case study did not share this clear bias towards the Inner Circle and the difference was not as clear