‘We want white native speakers from the UK’: native speakerism in ELT course books for young learners

Despite the importance of course books (CBs) in English Language Teaching (ELT) and numerous studies showing discriminatory native speakerist hiring policies in ELT, only two studies exist on how native speakerism can affect the hiring of course book authors (CBAs), and none on CBs for young learners. This study is thus the first to investigate the representation of ‘native speakers’, ‘non-native speakers’, white people, and people of colour (POC) as CBAs in internationally published CBs for young learners by six global publishers. Using native speakerism as the main theoretical framework, the study showed that 90 per cent of the CBAs were ‘native speakers’ and 96 per cent were white, and 67 per cent from the UK. Moreover, 74 per cent of the CBs were exclusively authored by ‘native speakers’ and 86 per cent by white authors, with a clear preference for CBAs from the UK (67 per cent). Potential explanations for this lack of diversity include homophilous hiring, colour-blindness, and market pressure. The study highlights the need for systemic changes in hiring policies to promote diversity and inclusion, such as open calls for authors, concrete diversity goals, and double-blind application processes.