Dr. Lilia Savova, Department of English, was a featured speaker at the second annual K-12 Dream Day during the forty-fifth annual TESOL convention in New Orleans, 2011 (March 16–19).
The title of her speech was “The ESOL Textbook: Dead or Alive.” In it, she addressed major teacher concerns about the use of ESOL textbooks.
The presentation clarified textbook selection and adaptation as well as the nature of textbooks as objects and constructs. It positioned the discussion in the context of an ecological approach to the ESOL classroom, which encourages a dynamic view of educational environments. It treated textbook use as part of a system whose effects emerge from the interaction of its components, as interconnected in a curriculum system that changes constantly (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). In short, applying complexity theory to the analysis of ESOL textbook use, it viewed it as part of a complex and dynamic ecosystem (Larsen-Freeman, 1997).
