The Changing EFL Teacher-Textbook Relationship in Ukraine, 1917 – 2010: A Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher’s Perspective. An Autoethnography

Abstract

The goal of this autoethnographic study is to understand the relationship between a non-native English-speaking teacher of English as a foreign language and their textbooks at different stages of their professional development, in different socio-cultural and political – Soviet and post-Soviet – contexts with the growing tendency of opposing or rejecting textbooks as educational tools. The study focuses on the gap in the literature, which lacks the account of textbooks in action. It is a first-person narrative of the use of English language textbooks, which is set in a school in Ukraine. The study also provides the retrospective on the development of local English textbooks published and used in the Soviet Union and later in independent Ukraine outlining differences and similarities between local and global trends in textbook use.