critical cultural awareness in iranian elt textbooks: course book realizations and ideals

Inspired by the previous works in the literature, this study focuses on critical cultural awareness (cca) as a crucial element of intercultural competency. accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the cultural elements in iranian high school textbooks (vision series) were (un)touched by the ministry of education. to this end, the conversation contents of the vision series (levels 1-3) were examined by the analytic hierarchy process (ahp) postulated to evaluate whether intercultural competence existed (or not existed) in vision series. in doing so, the content of the books were inspected for goals/objectives, cultural topics, cultural information, cultural activities, and teaching aids. it was found that the content was biased toward the source culture in general. in specific, shortages in focusing on the target culture was observed under each of the above-mentioned categories. finally, some ideal ways of presenting culture in the textbooks were put forward in the form of a cultural rubric. the study concludes with implications for teachers and syllabus designers and suggestions to overcome the raised issues.