The Portrayal of Product Culture within English Educational Textbooks for Senior High Students

Abstract

This study investigates the portrayal of product culture in English textbooks for senior high school students in Indonesia, focusing on the textbook “Bahasa Inggris: English for Change” for grade 11 students under the recently implemented Merdeka curriculum. Moran's checklist and Cortazzi & Jin's cultural categorization were used to identify and categorize cultural dimensions. Qualitative content analysis, complemented by quantitative data analysis, was used to comprehensively explore cultural representations. The findings revealed a significant emphasis on depictions of Places (47.2%), followed by Artifacts (28.3%), Institutions (13.2%), and Art Forms (11.3%), indicating an imbalance in cultural representation. In addition, most of the cultural content is from the source culture (Indonesia), with less representation from intercultural and international contexts. In conclusion, although the textbook “Bahasa Inggris: English for Change” lays the foundation for cultural learning, there are opportunities to improve the balance and inclusiveness of cultural representations. Recommendations are given to educators, English content developers, and future researchers to enrich students' cultural understanding and promote diversity in educational materials.