Negotiating global and local cultures: Indonesian teachers’ views on cultural content in an international EFL textbook

Abstract

This study examines how Indonesian EFL teachers interpret and negotiate cultural representations in an international English textbook. It explores the interplay between globally oriented cultural content and learners’ local sociocultural realities. Addressing the limited attention to teachers’ interpretive agency in Global South contexts, the study analyzes New Interchange Book 3 and Book 3A (Cambridge University Press), widely used in Indonesian non-formal English education. Grounded in the English as an International Language (EIL) framework, which views culture as dynamic and negotiated, the study adopts an interpretive qualitative approach. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with twenty Indonesian EFL teachers from diverse contexts and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings show that teachers viewed cultural representations not as universal models but as contextually situated meanings requiring pedagogical mediation. Rather than seeing them as incompatible with local values, teachers critically reinterpreted and recontextualized them in relation to learners’ experiences. Their reflections revealed four forms of cultural mediation: contextualization, comparison, adaptation, and critical reflection. This study highlights teachers’ interpretive agency as cultural mediation rather than gatekeeping, emphasizing the need for culturally responsive EFL pedagogy.