TESOL Materials: what can we research, how, and why?

One way of differentiating the various approaches to research on TESOL textbooks and materials is by using the framework of content, consumption, and production (Harwood, 2014). Research on materials can be (i) conducted at the level of the handout or textbook page (content); (ii) conducted by exploring how the materials are used by teachers and their learners (consumption); and (iii) conducted by researching the practices and norms of the textbook industry, or the ways in which materials writers work and the types of exercises they prioritise in their worksheets or textbooks (production). To make the differences between these three approaches clearer, this paper will review strong research-based and innovative exemplars of each type. The most popular type of research commonly evaluates materials by focusing on the soundness of their content. For instance, in Harwood (2014), I distinguished between materials content studies which focus on textbooks’ curriculum regarding language, pragmatics, and culture. Secondly, studies of materials consumption go beyond the page of the handout or textbook to examine how the materials are used by teachers and learners. One common approach which focuses on teachers’ patterns of use is to analyse the adaptations teachers make to the material with reference to an inventory of adaptation techniques (e.g., inventories by Islam & Mares, 2003 or McDonough & Shaw, 2003). Finally, studies of materials production can interrogate the process of authoring materials from the perspective of the writer or from the perspective of textbook editors and publishers (e.g., accounts by Evans et al., 2010; Stoller & Robinson, 2014; Tribble, 2010). The paper ends by presenting examples of innovative research from research on textbooks in mathematics teaching, a field associated with some exemplary research designs, to provide an agenda for future work on materials and textbooks.