Cultural Pedagogy and Curriculum: A Comparative Study of PTB and Oxford English Textbooks

Abstract

This study offers a comparative analysis of cultural content in Grade 6 English textbooks published by the Punjab Textbook Board (PTB) and Oxford University Press (OUP), using the four dimensional model developed by Adaskou, Britten, and Fahsi (1990), which includes aesthetic, sociological, semantic, and pragmatic senses. The aim is to examine how these textbooks represent culture and whether they support intercultural awareness among learners. A mixed-method content analysis method was applied to explore the presence of 60 predefined cultural elements across all lessons in both textbooks. Each occurrence of these elements was recorded, supported by textual examples, and presented in frequency tables and visual graphs for comparison. The results show that the Oxford textbook contains a total of 1050 occurrences of cultural elements, whereas the PTB textbook includes only 467. The findings reveal that the PTB book emphasises national identity, moral teachings, and religious values but lacks broader cultural diversity and real-world communicative features. In contrast, the Oxford textbook presents a broader range of local and global themes, everyday practices, environmental concerns, and language used in social interaction. These differences highlight the need for locally produced textbooks to strike a better balance between promoting national values and fostering intercultural competence in line with global educational standards.