Introduction
The present study focuses on understanding the tendencies of Portuguese teachers when it comes to adopting an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) coursebook for Young Learners (YL). The article has been divided into two main sections. The first section aims to contextualise the use of coursebooks in the EFL primary classroom as well as to reflect on the Portuguese educational context. It also looks into the implications of writing a suitable coursebook for the Portuguese market.
Section two aims to present and analyse the adoption results for the adoption periods of 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, and finally, to provide an analysis of the most adopted EFL national and international primary coursebooks in Portugal in the aforementioned adoption periods, in order to answer the following research question:
Do Portuguese teachers have the tendency to choose a local coursebook or are they choosing and using a coursebook which has a respectable international reputation, but which may not be an effective tool to implement the language programme they are required to teach?
Brief considerations regarding the use of a coursebook in the primary EFL classroom and in the Portuguese context
The use of coursebooks in the teaching and learning of foreign languages has been the subject of considerable debate around the world. Swan (1992) and Littlejohn (1992) opposed the use of coursebooks, arguing that they are hazardous teaching materials because they appear to reduce the function of the instructor to that of a passive implementer who blindly teaches the coursebook rather than attending to the needs of their students. In contrast, Edge and Garton (2009) stated that language materials such as coursebooks serve a vital role by allowing students to study in a stimulating and meaningful way. This debate was taken a step further by Hutchinson and Torres (1994) and Tomlinson (2011) who considered coursebooks to be agents of change, by presenting teachers and learners with a well-thought-out learning map with the potential to allow them to experience and even master new methodologies and approaches to learning EFL. In this sense, a suitable coursebook is an excellent tool for true and long-lasting change (Richards, 2017). Thus, when teachers are faced with change in terms of a reform of their current educational policy, coursebooks can provide the security that accommodates that change as they provide the necessary structure that scaffolds and “routinizes” it.
The Portuguese policy regarding learning EFL in the first cycle
English was introduced in the Portuguese State Curriculum as an obligatory subject from the 5th year of formal schooling (10 to 11-year-olds) for a duration of five consecutive years in the Decreto-Lei nº 139/2012, de 5 de julho (Ministério da Educação e Ciência, 2012). In the school year of 2013-2014, this was altered by the Decreto-Lei nº 91/2013, de 10 julho (Ministério da Educação e Ciência, 2013), which clearly stated all interested schools could henceforth offer their students English as a non-obligatory extracurricular subject if they so desired, known as an Atividade de Enriquecimento Curricular (AEC). Although this law emerged form the best of intentions to expose Portuguese YL to the English language from an early age onwards, it landed up causing a rift between students in the EFL classroom: there were students who had been in primary schools where English had been implemented as a non-curricular subject (AEC) and who were inevitably more advanced in their EFL learning process than those who had not been to a school where English had been offered. Furthermore, when these AEC English classes existed, they were optional, with no direct consequences for students with high absence rates other than the fact that their learning rate was significantly affected. Additionally, it implied a lack of official assessment procedures, which had a detrimental effect on students' motivation as they lacked a legitimate norm by which to test their advancement. In effect, Portuguese English teachers were already struggling to manage the diverse student background and language levels in the EFL fifth-year classroom, which up until 2015 represented students’ first obligatory contact with the English language. Classes were often formed with students originating from different primary schools, resulting in a mixed-ability classroom from the very outset of the formal obligatory learning experience of the subject. Furthermore, classes were composed of 28-30 students, making it difficult for teachers to work closely with learners who were just beginning to learn the subject to help them “catch up” with the more advanced learners. Thus, teachers had to manage a difficult learning tightrope to ensure that each learner remained focused and motivated regardless of their English level.
In 2014, a further change was made to the Portuguese State Curriculum by the Educational Minister at the time, Nuno Crato, in the form of the Decreto-Lei nº 176/2014, de 12 dezembro (Ministério da Educação e Ciência, 2014), introducing English as an obligatory curricular subject in the third and fourth grades (8 to 9-year-olds and 9 to 10-year-olds respectively). The introduction of this new obligatory curricular subject would be implemented from the very next school year in a phased rather than simultaneous manner. As a result, in 2015-2016 this law would be applied to the curriculum of the third grade, and in 2016-2017 it would be applied to the curriculum of the fourth grade. The law was passed in December and the adoption period occurred between June and July of the following year. This decision had two major implications in the EFL primary classroom: firstly, classes would once again be mixed-ability classes, with students who had very distinct language levels depending on whether they were learning English for the first time or if they already had some knowledge of the language from their experience in the AECs. Secondly, English had been taught in many schools across the country as an extracurricular activity by “teachers” who were not always certified language teaching professionals and who taught their classes based on the following document: Programa de Generalização do Ensino de Inglês no 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico[1] [General Programme for Teaching English in the First Cycle] (Bento et al., 2005). Consequently, when English was added to the curriculum, new teachers needed to be quickly trained, and English teachers who had previously been tasked with instructing teenagers were asked to teach YL without any prior training. Thus, many teachers came to rely heavily on the adopted coursebook and the approaches in it.
This is of particular significance as Hutchinson and Torres (1994) stress that teachers often consider coursebook writers to be specialists who are aware of their concrete classrooms’ needs. However, in their view, this is rarely the case since many coursebook writers write a global coursebook, which is defined by Tomlinson (2011) to be a coursebook that is not written “for learners of a particular culture or country but which is intended for use by any class of learners in the specified level and age group anywhere in the world” (p. 12). As a result, their target audience is a global market, resulting in the fact that they often have a very limited knowledge of a local market’s real teaching and learning needs. This would suggest that local authors could have a far more practical and effective understanding of the local teaching context and its subsequent needs. Consequently, locally produced coursebooks could represent more effective teaching aids in times of change such as the one the Portuguese educational system was experiencing at the time. The decision in December of 2014 posed a significant challenge for Portuguese publishers and authors as they only had three months to produce a coursebook if it was to be published in time for the adoption period in June-July of 2015.
The process of writing a coursebook
Writing a coursebook is a collaborative team effort rather than an individual undertaking. This obviously indicates the necessity to start by putting together a writing team of authors and encouraging them to work together as equal members with the same perspective. As Prowse (2011) suggests,
…writing teams need some time to bond in order to discover their common methodological assumptions and how their individual experience can contribute to creating a coursebook. (p. 152)
In our experience in Portugal, the process is somewhat different from the one Prowse describes. Portuguese editors often invite a teacher with experience in the Portuguese educational system or a leading educational expert in the area to form a team of authors to write a particular coursebook or project. This means that, contrary to what Prowse suggests, the person is allowed to create their own writing team rather than being forced to work with a team of authors selected by the publishing house. Portuguese publishers usually only suggest teams when the leading author is not able to assemble a team of their own. Regardless of how a team is formed, the next step is to define a mode of working as Prowse explains. A possible option is for the team of authors to get together physically or virtually and plan the outline of each unit in the Student’s Book in order to then go off and write their allocated parts individually. Once a unit has been completed, the authors then exchange units to offer each other feedback to tweak the first draft of the original so that the author responsible for it can revise it. Following the completion of the rewritten version, the team of authors can then double-check it and a co-author who did not write the unit can write the answer key to the final agreed-upon version.
Prowse (2011) goes on to present an alternative working mode, namely for the leading author to do the ‘macro’ sketching of each unit. The remaining co-authors can then go off and fill in the unit skeleton that has been created and elaborate the respective answer key. Upon the completion of the first draft, the units are exchanged and commented on so that they can be reworked by the original author.
Where the coursebook authors ‘find’ the information to base the coursebook on is another issue that has to be addressed. As Prowse again notes, the internet has made this procedure substantially simpler for authors because search engines like Google and websites give users fast access to reliable information and genuine content. Alternatively, texts from different websites can be merged to create a new original text that is appropriate in terms of the level of language that students need. Both local and international authors now have equal access to resources because of technological advancements.
Thus, it appears that the skill of writing a successful coursebook is dependent on the ability to research and locate interesting topics and texts for students in order to rewrite them using language that is as authentic and natural as possible for their specific learning context. Thus, for the content to be comprehensible for students, the language used to write it and the cultural context used to make it meaningful will have to remain within the level and expectations of the target students (Ayu, 2020). It is thus pertinent to question whether international authors, who lack experience in the cultural context they are writing for, are in a better position to write a coursebook that meets local students’ and teachers’ needs than local authors are. These accounts suggest that local authors who have a hands-on-practical understanding of the local culture and educational system may possibly be better equipped for the task at hand. In order to justify this claim, a closer analysis of the target audience that the coursebook is being written for is required.
Is there such a thing as the typical Portuguese teacher in the Portuguese educational system?
To answer this question, one must begin by analysing the previous language learning and teaching experiences that may influence the views of Portuguese teachers regarding education and the methodology that should be followed in the YL classroom (Edge & Garton, 2009). How do the majority of Portuguese teachers view the task of teaching YL a foreign language? And what kind of coursebook do Portuguese teachers value? For a coursebook to be adopted by a wide number of schools, causing it to stand out among the remaining coursebooks available for adoption, it will have to cater to the unspoken and intrinsic beliefs and needs of Portuguese teachers.
Following the introduction of the Decreto-Lei (Law) nº 176/2014 (Ministério da Educação e Ciência, 2014), officially introducing English as an obligatory subject in the Portuguese primary curriculum, there was a need to create a new group of teachers, group 120 (primary school teachers of English), who would be legally qualified to teach EFL to YL. Only teachers belonging to this group were now allowed to teach YL in the third and fourth grades in the Portuguese educational system. In effect, this new group came to be formed by a diverse group of teachers: those who had been teaching students in the AECs and were experienced in teaching YL and those who had previously been included in the generalist primary teachers (Group 110), middle school teachers of English (Group 220) or high school teachers of English (Group 330), who had never been trained to teach EFL to YL, but who had decided to do so in order to obtain tenure or to work closer to home. For teachers to be eligible to teach in this new Group (120), they had to meet the following requirements presented in the Decreto-Lei n.º 176/2014:
Scenario 1: Hold a master’s degree related to teaching EFL and have completed their teaching internship targeting YL in the primary classroom.
Scenario 2: Have completed a bachelor’s degree in Portuguese or English and be teaching at a primary level at that time.
Scenario 3: Have at least a year of experience teaching YL and hold one of the following qualifications: a CELTA diploma or a 50-hour online training course run over an 8-week period, worth 40 credits and ministered by the British Council entitled “Ready, Steady & Go” (CiPELT).
Scenario 4: Belong to Group 110, 220 or 330 and have successfully completed a Complemento de Formação (Complementary Training Course) related to teaching EFL to YL at a Portuguese university or polytechnic that specialises in teacher training.
Thus, teachers who wanted to start teaching YL in Portugal were expected to successfully complete a training course which, depending on the institution, ranged from an online 8-week training to a one-year Complementary Training course or even a two-year Master’s programme, obtained previously. This meant that although many teachers met the legal requirements to teach this age group, they did not in effect have much practical experience to do so effectively. To complicate matters further, a third group of teachers applied to teach in Group 120: teachers who had been teaching English to YL on the island of Madeira. At that time, many of the teachers teaching there were from mainland Portugal and the creation of Group 120 presented them with the opportunity to teach in the mainland once again as there had not been any vacancies previously to do so. It should be noted that Madeira has a long-standing reputation for creating an innovative independent English learning programme, currently known as Edu-LE for YL. This programme was put together by a team working for the Secretaria Regional de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia (Regional Department of Education, Science and Technology) and was directly accountable to the autonomous government of Madeira. The programme created by this team introduced English in the primary curriculum starting in the first grade, meaning that students in Madeira were exposed to English for at least four years at primary school and a further 90% to an additional three years at preschool. Teachers in Madeira received considerable support, as the team monitored teaching practices, providing teachers with assistance whenever necessary and specialised training regarding the implementation of a portfolio approach to language learning, in addition to the best methodologies and practices to teach YL. The programme was first implemented in the academic year of 2001-2002. At the time, it was called Projeto de Intervenção Pedagógica no âmbito da Aprendizagem e do Ensino das Línguas Estrangeiras no 1.º Ciclo (Pedagogical Intervention Project in the domain of the Learning and Teaching of Foreign Languages in the 1st Cycle). The teachers who participated in it were very knowledgeable and experienced in the field of teaching English to YL by the time they applied to teach in Group 120.
As a result of these educational policies in Portugal, English teachers belonging to this new group were not only diverse, but also had a wide array of specific needs and expectations resulting from the system they were teaching in. Therefore, for a coursebook to be adopted by a large number of Portuguese teachers and schools, it would have to offer clear responses to these needs and expectations in order to convince teachers that it could successfully engage Portuguese students to learn English.
The type of student that represents the average target learner
It is important for all YL to feel motivated to learn. As a result, a good coursebook must involve them in the learning process and ensure that they continue to be enthusiastic, dedicated, and resilient students. Dörnyei (2001) considers that motivation is a complex concept and proposes a process-orientated approach to viewing motivation in order to take into account the changes of motivation over time that students experience. Thus, according to Dörnyei, motivation consists of several distinct phases. The first phase, known as choice motivation, implies generating motivation and choosing a target-learning goal or task. Phase two, known as executive motivation, implies actively maintaining and protecting this motivation in the classroom, where students are exposed to various distractions that can set them off task. The final phase, termed motivational retrospection, implies students retrospectively analysing how things went. This phase is important because the way that students process their past learning experiences will impact the kind of tasks and activities they will be open to pursue in the future. Thus, a coursebook capable of nurturing students’ motivation needs to break down learning into manageable goals and chunks, provide students with the necessary strategies to achieve those goals, and finally, make students aware of the learning progress they have made to ensure that they remain internally motivated to learn the language.
The Portuguese YL classroom was a fairly mixed-ability classroom, so the coursebook would have to carefully handle the complicated and long-term process of developing and retaining motivation. It would have to serve as a language learning tool both for the students who were learning the language for the first time, and for those who had benefitted from the AECs in the first and second grades or who had been introduced to English at nursery school. The challenge would, then, be to create a coursebook capable of meeting the needs of the above-mentioned three distinct phases (Dörnyei, 2001), by presenting students with varied language activities that would cater not only to their preferred methods of learning but also to their diverse language levels. By doing so, students who began learning the language later would eventually be able to narrow the learning distance between themselves and their peers. Therefore, to ensure successful language learning experiences and outcomes, a motivating coursebook would need to provide engaging and scaffolded tasks, appropriate to students' levels and with clear learning objectives.
EFL coursebook adoptions for YL in Portugal
The following section begins by presenting the EFL primary coursebooks on the Portuguese Ministry of Education’s official coursebook adoption list in 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. Next, data related to the coursebook adoptions in the previously mentioned periods are presented and analysed in order to reach a deeper understanding of the adoption tendencies of Portuguese teachers. It should be noted that such data is of an official nature as it is provided by the Ministry of Education to all publishing companies that present coursebooks for adoption. As such, the data in question is confidential and only Porto Editora (a major Portuguese publishing company) provided access following an official request to the head of the company explaining that the data requested was purely for academic purposes. The request was granted in light of the fact that the data corresponded to adoptions that were coming to an end, as in Portugal adoptions are valid for a six-year period. As such, schools and teachers would not be influenced by the present study to alter adoption choices. Finally, a comparative analysis of the most adopted EFL national and international coursebooks for the third and fourth grades is provided. Thus, the present study follows a mixed methods research model with a parallel design beginning with a quantitative analysis of the official adoption numbers to reach objective conclusions regarding adoption tendencies in the YL market in Portugal. Once these conclusions are drawn, we proceed to carry out a qualitative analysis of these coursebooks to better understand how these meet Portuguese teachers’ needs to the point of Portuguese YL teachers being capable of identifying themselves with them and consequently adopting a particular coursebook. The crossing of this data permits drawing various conclusions related to Portuguese YL teachers’ adoption tendencies and habits for the third and fourth grades.
Presentation and analysis of the Portuguese adoptions of EFL coursebooks for YL in 2015 -2016 and 2016-2017
The coursebooks offered for the first official adoption of EFL coursebooks for YL were published on the Portuguese Ministry of Education’s website (Direção Geral da Educação, n.d.) so that all the parties interested could have direct access to them in an effort to make adoptions as transparent as possible for everyone involved. The coursebooks that teachers could officially select to adopt for 2015-2016 are presented in Table 1.
Table 1: List of English coursebooks offered for 2015-2016 (Third grade coursebooks)
Table 1 shows that the prices of the coursebooks were quite similar because they were set by the Portuguese government, which means that internationally produced coursebooks were not more expensive than their local counterparts, as is frequently the case in other markets. This meant teachers were unlikely to be influenced to choose a coursebook for its price. Additionally, the information in Table 1 demonstrates that teachers could choose from a total of eight coursebooks at the time, six of which were produced locally. The remaining two were produced internationally for the global market. Figure 1 presents the adoption results of 2015-2016. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, this data is confidential and thus only the Ministry of Education and publishing companies who presented a coursebook for adoption have access to it.
Figure 1: Percentage of adoptions for EFL coursebooks in 2015-2016
Figure 1 indicates that the coursebook Let’s Rock! 3 obtained approximately four times more adoptions than the coursebook that got second place (Start!), which is also a locally produced coursebook. This adoption tendency is further confirmed by the fact that the four most adopted coursebooks were locally published Portuguese coursebooks and that the international publishers together only obtained 3.9% of the total (100%), as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Comparison of the percentage of local and international adoptions in 2015-2016
When analysing the adoptions for internationally produced coursebooks in more detail, it is possible to observe that there were an additional 12 coursebooks adopted by teachers which did not appear on the Ministry of Education’s official adoption list, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Percentage of adoptions for international coursebooks in 2015-2016
The increase of coursebooks in Figure 3 is explained by the fact that some private schools preferred to have the liberty to adopt a coursebook they felt better met the needs of their curriculum and change the adoption if necessary. By not placing the coursebook adoption on the Ministry’s official platform for adoptions for the year in question, they were at liberty to change coursebooks at any time. However, if an official adoption were made, it is valid for a six-year period as stipulated by the Ministry of Education in the Decreto-Lei nº 47/2006 (Ministério da Educaçao e Ciencia, 2006). The adoption of non-certified coursebooks is only possible when the Ministry of Education does not stipulate that the coursebooks for a particular subject in a particular adoption period have to be certified, as was the case of English in the adoptions of 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. In practice, this means that schools can adopt any national or international coursebook that has not been certified.
The tendency of Portuguese teachers to adopt locally produced coursebooks was once again confirmed in the adoptions of the fourth grade coursebooks for the academic year of 2016-2017. Table 2 lists the coursebooks offered during this adoption period.
Table 2: List of English coursebooks offered for 2016-2017 (Fourth grade coursebooks)
Table 2 demonstrates that the prices of the coursebooks were defined by the Portuguese government, as in the previous adoption year. However, in this adoption teachers could only choose from a total of six coursebooks because two publishers (Lusoinfo II-Multimédia Lda. and Santillana) opted not to submit a fourth grade coursebook to the Portuguese Ministry of Education. Adoption numbers from the previous year (presented in Figure 1) did not justify an investment of this type for these publishers. As in the case of the adoptions of the previous year, Figure 4 presents coursebooks that did not appear on the Ministry of Education’s official adoption list.
Figure 4: Percentage of adoptions for the EFL coursebooks for adoption in 2016-2017
Figure 4 demonstrates the difference between the coursebook that was most adopted (Let’s Rock! 4) and the coursebook that got second place (Start!) continues to be significant (30.9%). However, the latter was able to increase the number of adoptions in Portuguese schools by 7.17%, thereby narrowing the distance between the first and second most adopted coursebooks. It should also be noted that this value represents four times the percentage of adoptions of international coursebooks, as demonstrated in Figure 5. As in the previous year, the top four adopted coursebooks were locally produced, making up a total of 95.7% of the market in comparison to 2,.5% of international coursebooks. Furthermore, a small percentage of schools (1.5%) chose once again not to officially adopt any coursebook.
Figure 5: Comparison of the percentage of local and international adoptions in 2016-201
Figure 6 compares the results of international coursebooks obtained in the third and fourth year adoptions. As this figure demonstrates, all the international coursebooks suffered a decrease in adoption numbers b with the exception of the following coursebooks, which were adopted for the first time in 2016-2017, representing an adoption total of 0.4%: Get Together 2, Lead The Way 3, Fun skills and Quest 4.
Figure 6: Comparison of the adoptions of international coursebooks in 2015-2016 and 2016- 2017
In light of the EFL coursebook adoption numbers for the third and fourth grades in the Portuguese educational system, it is possible to affirm that Portuguese teachers showed a clear preference for national coursebooks over their international counterparts. The next part of this paper aims to provide an analysis of the most adopted national and international coursebooks on the official list provided by the Ministry of Education in 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, in order to better understand the tendency of Portuguese teachers to adopt a national rather than an international coursebook.
Analysis of the most adopted national and international EFL coursebooks for YL in Portugal
To understand whether the above mentioned coursebooks implemented the stipulated curriculum, the Metas Curriculares de Inglês (English Curricular goals) (Bravo et al., 2015), which represented the official English programme to be followed by teachers in Portugal at the time must be investigated.
The Metas Curriculares de Inglês for the third and fourth grades published in 2015 organised teaching and learning for YL according to the following language skills: Listening, Reading, Spoken Interaction, Spoken Production, Writing, Intercultural Domain and, finally, Lexis and Grammar at an A1 level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. This document (Appendix 1) presents the core contents that YL are expected to learn in the third and fourth grades in Portuguese schools at a primary level. It is organised according to the four language skills, beginning with listening skills that should be developed from a sound to a word and, finally, to a sentence level depending on the grade in question, which became progressively more challenging in the fourth grade. The objectives associated with reading were mainly linked to identifying and understanding the meaning of target vocabulary. However, in the fourth grade students were expected to read and understand short texts containing some of the target vocabulary they had learnt. The learning objectives associated with the skill of speaking were subdivided into two categories: spoken interaction and spoken production. In both cases, students were expected to express themselves with a limited range of vocabulary in previously prepared situations. This means that they were still not expected to react to any unforeseen circumstances. With regards to writing, in the third grade students were expected to develop their writing skills by ordering letters and words to form sentences or by filling in gaps with words that have been previously provided. This implies that students were only expected to recognise and copy words and not to write them from memory. Furthermore, it was only in the fourth grade that students were expected to produce very simple texts. In effect, there was some progression associated with all four skills between the third and fourth grades.
In addition, the Metas Curriculares de Inglês presented a further two categories that teachers should follow when teaching these levels. The first was called the Intercultural Domain. It consisted of the main contexts associated with the target vocabulary that students were expected to learn. The lexical topics chosen were always linked to cultural contexts that children would be able to understand and associate with their everyday lives. The implication was that they should be able to then apply and use the language they were learning to speak about their reality. The final section, entitled Lexis and Grammar, was extensive in comparison to the remaining sections of the document, presenting a detailed list of vocabulary and grammatical items that students were expected to learn in the third and fourth grades.
This document was therefore mainly focused on more formal contents like the four language skills and the lexis and grammar that students were expected to learn at the levels in question. It did not contemplate any of the more abstract 21st century skills which implied teaching the whole learner (not simply the language student) and preparing the child to become an active 21st century citizen of the world.
The most adopted national and international third grade EFL coursebooks in Portugal in 2015-2016 were then analysed using the criteria defined by the Portuguese Ministry of Education (Direção Geral da Educação, 2015) for coursebooks that had not been subjected to the certification process (which was the case of the coursebooks in question). The criteria have been translated into English and findings have been organised in a table for the sake of readability (Appendix 2), revealing that all three coursebooks under analysis presented units with a regular pattern and growing level of difficulty that scaffolded learning for students. Similarly, the three coursebooks contained a variety of additional resources and materials that catered to YL needs. Yet, only Let’s Rock! 3 and Smileys 3 contained a revision unit that reactivated previous learning. In addition, although all these coursebooks contained a revision section at the end of each unit, only the locally produced coursebook (Let’s Rock! 3) contained additional L1 support to ease the self-evaluation process for students. This is significant as it could facilitate the development of students’ autonomy and empowered them to become more autonomous learners.
Regarding the implementation of the Portuguese programme, the only coursebook to implement the entire programme was a locally produced coursebook. In the case of the remaining two coursebooks, only Smileys 3 had been adapted to cover some of the particularities of the Portuguese programme. New Treetops 3 is a coursebook that has clearly been written for a global market as it failed to include a significant number of learning goals of the Metas Curriculares de Inglês (Bravo et al., 2015). This could further imply that it is a more challenging coursebook in terms of articulating learning with other subjects in the Portuguese curriculum.
Thus, out of the two international publishers that presented coursebooks for the 2015-2016 adoption, only one (Express Publishing) opted to adapt the international version of the coursebook to create a national version capable of meeting the needs of Portuguese teachers and students. The remaining international publisher (Oxford University Press) presented the Portuguese market with a global coursebook used in many other markets.
Similarly, the most adopted national and international fourth grade EFL coursebooks in Portugal, in 2016-2017, were also analysed (Appendix 3), using the same coursebook analysis grid (for uncertified coursebooks). Once again, findings allowed us to conclude that the more efficient coursebook in terms of teaching the Portuguese programme was a locally produced coursebook (Let's Rock! 4). However, this time the coursebooks in question were all more uniform regarding the tasks and rubrics they contained. An example of this was the fact that all three coursebooks contained a greater variety of arts and crafts activities and many of the resources (e.g., the stickers) that were present in Let’s Rock! 3 in the previous year). Yet, Let's Rock! 4 continued to be the only coursebook that offered any L1 support throughout the coursebook.
In terms of the implementation of the Portuguese learning guidelines, it is also possible to observe that Smiles 4 almost implemented the programme completely. The same cannot be said of New Treetops 4, which continued to follow an international programme to the detriment of the Metas Curriculares de Inglês (Bravo et al., 2015). This decision not to adapt the coursebook to the Portuguese programme may be due to the fact that the Portuguese market is limited. Thus, from the economic standpoint of an international publisher, it might not justify developing a coursebook that is suitable only for the Portuguese curriculum.
The data presented seems to suggest that Portuguese EFL teachers are sensitive to the needs of their teaching context and tend to adopt local coursebooks for YL that clearly map out the programme they are expected to teach by the Ministry of Education, rather than adopting international coursebooks written for a global market.
Discussion and Conclusion
Coursebooks are a widely used resource in the teaching of EFL around the world, and in Portugal the situation is no different. However, although many studies have been conducted in the field, few have been carried out in relation to the Portuguese market in the first cycle (primary/elementary school). Therefore, the present study set out to understand what tendencies Portuguese teachers have when it comes to adopting a coursebook. This leads to the question of whether they favour an international coursebook that does not necessarily implement the Portuguese programme in vigour, or if they prefer a locally produced coursebook that has been tailored to meet such programme. This investigation set out to find the answer to this question and, consequently, to also determine whether local or international authors were in a better position to cater to Portuguese teachers’ needs.
Findings revealed that the vast majority of Portuguese teachers favoured locally produced coursebooks, which were written by local authors who had a more thorough knowledge of the Portuguese educational context, thus putting them in a better position to cover to the needs of the Portuguese market. Furthermore, findings indicated that Portuguese EFL teachers valued primary coursebooks that guided them to successfully implement the orientation provided by the Ministry of Education.
The mission of writing a coursebook which successfully meets the needs of a national market may be interpreted differently by national and international publishers. However, in the case of the Portuguese market, the adoption numbers of 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 revealed that authors and publishing companies need to invest in a coursebook that reflects the Portuguese teachers’ educational beliefs and helps them cater to their teaching context if they aim to improve their adoption results. The present study also supports the opinion of Hutchinson and Torres (1994) that a coursebook can indeed constitute an agent of change in terms of a teacher’s practice. In addition, it corroborates their claim that when authors and publishers produce coursebooks, they should recognise their potential in terms of teacher development and actively build this into the coursebook design. This is an aspect that is yet to be researched in relation to the first cycle of the Portuguese market and that merits future study.
This study is limited to a detailed analysis of only the most adopted national and international EFL primary coursebooks. Yet, there were more players in the race, as shown in Tables 1 and 2. Thus, it would be pertinent to analyse the remaining coursebooks in question. Furthermore, following the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 adoptions, the Portuguese Ministry of Education introduced the Perfil dos Alunos à Saída da Escolaridade Obrigatória (Student Profile Upon Completing Obligatory Schooling) (Martins et al., 2017) and the Aprendizagens Essenciais (Essential Learning) (Direção Geral da Educação, 2018), which replaced the former Metas Curriculares de Inglês (English Curricular goals) (Bravo et al., 2015) to help Portuguese schools guarantee that learning be more inclusive, learner-centred, and in tune with the local and cultural context of each school. Under the Perfil dos Alunos à Saída da Escolaridade Obrigatória and the flexibilidade curricular (cross-curricular learning), schools are now being given the opportunity to introduce multidisciplinary, learner-centred approaches that develop 21st century skills and create competent 21st century learners in classrooms across the country. In light of these new orientations from the Ministry of Education, future studies would be pertinent to determine whether the tendencies revealed in the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 adoptions are repeated or whether the situation changes significantly.
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[1] The original document may be consulted at: https://www.dge.mec.pt/sites/default/files/Basico/Documentos/orient_program_ensino_ingles_3e4_anos.pdf
