How do pre-service English teachers talk about (potentially problematic) teaching materials?

Abstract

The data set consists of ten transcripts of ten group discussions conducted with participants of a seminar on „Racism in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching" in the English and American Studies programme at a university in Germany. The seminar combined theoretical inputs on critical anti-racism with practical phases of critically analysing textbooks. The participants were both Bachelor's and Master's students aiming to become teachers of English. Five group discussions took place before the seminar (pre-discussions), and five were conducted 5 weeks into the seminar (post-discussions). The pre-discussions lasted between 16:21 and 17:44 minutes and the post-discussions lasted between 10:17 and 14:01 minutes. The impulses for the group discussion, on the basis of which the students exchange ideas, are two different, unrelated textbook pages on the topic „USA" at both times. The participants were not assigned to fixed groups and their identity was not tracked between the two points in time. The students are labelled consecutively from the first pre-discussion to the last post-discussion (S1 - S36), so that a student has two different labels in pre and post. There were different group compositions at both times.