English language and employability in locally produced ELT textbooks: Clashes between neoliberal ideals and social class structures in the pedagogical space

Abstract

While a growing body of literature has illustrated how neoliberal discourses of English and employment have come to shape English language teaching (ELT) textbooks in a globalized world, little is known about how the translation of these discourses into pedagogical practices is mediated by the social class structures in postcolonial societies. In this article, we draw on a larger qualitative case study to address this gap in the Bangladesh secondary schooling context. We utilize Bourdieu’s conceptual resources and analyze interview and classroom observation data to illustrate how discourses of English and employment introduced into the secondary education-level ELT textbook are enacted in a high socio-economic status school. As our findings illustrate, the students from this school rejected how English was linked to low-profile jobs in the textbook, as this representation contradicted their social class and career aspirations. These findings contribute to the political economy in applied linguistics literature by illustrating how the enactment of the neoliberal discourses of English and employment constructed in the locally produced ELT textbooks is mediated by social class.