The Evaluation of Textbook Development Process at the Iranian Ministry of Education: A case study of the New English Textbook of the First Grade of Junior High School

Witin 27 years, radical changes in the English textbook of the first grade of junior high school at Iran’s public schools has motivated researchers to evaluate the new English textbook (Prospect 1). However, the process of developing the new textbook has been neglected by researchers so far. Since process evaluation is viewed as a guarantee of quality product(Hussain et al., 2011), this study aimed at evaluating the development process of the new textbook by applying the process evaluation section of the CIPP (Context, Input, Process, and Product) model. To this aim, four members of the textbook development team were interviewed and the data were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The results indicated some challenges with the textbook development process such as lack of enough budgets, lack of necessary human and physical resources, lack of communication between the textbook members and the outside groups, and lack of the team’s experience regarding the sensitivity of the project. Thus, modifications in different aspects of the project are required to produce more efficient and attractively designed EFL textbooks for the next grades since this nationalmovement will have a great impact on the success or failure of English education of millions of public school students

Keywords:

CIPP model , Process evaluation , Prospect 1 , textbook development , Textbook evaluation