the treatment of culture in the elt curriculum: an analysis of local high school books in iran

The aim of the study was to evaluate cultural construction of the selected textbooks in the iranian english language teaching (elt) school curriculum. this study used descriptive content analysis and the categorisations proposed by adaskou, britten and fahsi (1990) to investigate the representation of culture and its aspects (aesthetic and sociological) in dialogues and reading passages in the vision series, new series of high school books in iran. the analysis revealed that most of the cultural elements embodied in the vision textbooks were based on the source language culture (iranian culture) and only a few were based on the target language (tl) and international cultures. furthermore, the results showed that the aesthetic aspects of culture were highlighted more than the sociological values of culture in the high school books. the findings were discussed in light of the previously conducted studies, and the implications for policy, practice and research were highlighted.