Hybrid Culture and Intercultural Competence in Indonesian EFL Textbooks: Policies and Pedagogical Implications
Jimmy Sapoetra

Primary Teacher Education Department, Faculty of Humanities, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia 11480

Abstract

Hybrid Culture is a new term which reflects the diversity and complexity of the world culture existing today. The term hybrid culture refers to the mixture of several kinds of culture blended or integrated into one new culture which has the characteristics of the old and new culture it represents. In the context of EFL learning in Indonesia, many EFL textbooks do not really cover the hybridity of the culture which creates the pedagogical implications in the future of education. Majority of the textbooks either focus on the local or target culture. They do not emphasize the importance of the students to understand that culture is not single-handedly original in its nature but consists of many external factors. This study is trying to investigate such phenomena. The data were taken from 3 (three) local EFL textbooks used in some high schools in Indonesia. For the cultural content evaluation, Byram and Morgan (1994) and Kilickaya (2004) proposed a qualitative evaluation checklist with a list of criteria for examining the extent and methods of how culture is presented. There are nine categories from the checklist, namely- social identity and social groups, social interaction, belief and behavior, socio-political institutions, socialization and the life-cycle, national history, national geography, national cultural heritage, stereotypes and national identity (Byram & Morgan, 1994). Then the results were compared and it was proven that the textbooks do not represent the hybrid culture in their content.

Keywords: hybrid culture, local culture, target culture, pedagogical implication

Topic: Education