Critical Review of Culture Related Content in Iranian Junior High School Textbooks (Prospects 1,2,3): Teachers’ Perspectives

English language teaching/learning has many important components. One of them, especially for those learning English in Non- English speaking countries is textbooks. A textbook is a book used for the study of a subject. People use a textbook to learn facts and methods about a certain subject. Textbooks sometimes have questions to test the knowledge and understanding of the learner. Text book evaluation is of important value for teachers, supervisors, administrators, and materials developers, to name a few. Textbooks have been analyzed from different perspectives by different researchers. Some surveyed their contents critically, and some investigate the role of textbooks in language learning, and still some others studied meticulously the theoretical bases upon which the content of the text books rested, but one of the neglected components of the textbooks which is of paramount importance is cultural component. I mean, how the textbook writers dealt with the culture. Did they incorporate mostly home culture or target culture? Did they make an attempt to use content that has no cultural load at all? In other words, were they in favor of the elements of target or source culture solely? Or did they strive to be neutral or, to some extent, use the combination of both. This controversy prompted the current investigation into the cultural element of ELT textbooks in Iran.