Teachers-related Roles The Importance of Textbooks and Their Roles in ELT Classroom

can serve, “... as a core resource, as a source of supplemental material, as an inspiration for classroom activities, even as the curriculum itself.” Beyond the area of clearly visible outcome of language learning and teaching activity based on the objectives specified in the curriculum, textbooks also hold a significant role regarding the less noticeable outcome which is known as the hidden curriculum. Jackson 1968 in Margolis 2001, acknowledged as the one coined the term, observed that there were values, dispositions, and social and behavioral expectations that brought rewards in school for students and that learning what was expected along the lines was a feature of the hidden curriculum. Using textbooks as their data, Littlejohn and Windeatt 1989: 174 argues that materials cover a hidden curriculum by its contribution to “... learners’ perceptions of knowledge, language learning, and roles, to their affective and cognitive development, and to their general stock of information about the world.” This is especially true for textbooks which contain a package of texts with their topical issues and common sense, language features which firmly related to certain cultures, activities with their specific instructions, etc. Implication to this one role of textbooks is probably most concerned with the textbook authors who need to design the materials in the textbooks thoughtfully and the teachers who need to be careful of their materials selection. More to the contributions of textbooks to the curriculum is the famous concept introduced by Hutchinson and Torres 1994, textbooks as agents of change. The change here mainly refers to the curriculum change as they base their idea on Van den Akker’s experiment of comparing teachers accompanied by structured materials with teachers whose materials were loosely structured Van den Akker, 1988 in Hutchinson and Torres, 1994.It is found out in his study that the highly structured approach is more effective in getting curriculum change into the classroom, for which Hutchinson and Torres 1994 then conclude that the crucial factor in achieving smooth and lasting change is security, considering that change is a disruptive and threatening process. Furthermore, they challenge the roles of textbooks as agents of curriculum change addressing textbooks to be beneficial in gradually introducing changes within a structured framework, giving room for teacher to concentrate on coping with new content and procedures, and relieving the teacher of much of the burden of responsibility for introducing changes.

C. Ethnicity

People are born embodying certain ethnic qualities. Even though they may not consciously be aware of their own ethnic identity, others of different ethnic groups shall be able to identify that they have some differences – that they represent diversity of ethnicity. These differences are not to be treated as barriers to relate to each other, instead they open opportunities for people to getting to know each other. As problems regarding ethnicity keep increasing in many places, it has become an urgent issue that people need to equip themselves with knowledge on ethnicity and thus learn to embrace ethnic awareness toward each other. Coming from this idea, the following literature reviews try to present the idea of ethnicity from the fundamental knowledge of the definition of ethnicity to