A Cross-National Analysis of Learning Objectives Using Bloom’S Revised Taxonomy: the Case of Iranian and Kuwaiti High School English Textbooks

Due to the crucial role of textbooks in foreign language programs many countries, in congruence with their national curricula, develop their own local textbooks. iran and kuwait, as two authoritative governments in the middle east, recently altered their curricula to reach to a great scientific, economic, etc. position in the region. the present mixed-method study analyzed the manifested learning objectives in the recent iranian and kuwaiti nationwide high school elt textbooks known as vision and over to you. to do so, bloom’s revised taxonomy of learning objectives was employed as the analytical framework to scrutinize the content structure and objectives of both series to investigate the extent to which they represent lower-order thinking skills (lots) and higher-order thinking skills (hots) learning objectives. intra- and inter-coder reliability was carried out to ensure the consistency of the scheme. the results revealed statistically significant differences between the different volumes of each series in terms of learning objectives. however, the chi-square test did not show a significant difference in terms of their emphasis on lots and hots. the overall results revealed lots as the most prevalent levels in both series and also indicated that the selected materials mostly failed to engage learners in the activities require hots. this study has some implications for policy makers, material developers, and language teachers. moreover, this study has opened new avenues for further cross-national research in the field of textbooks evaluation.