Research on English language teacher training, digital literacies and gender equality in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC) is a strategic priority according to UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (on the quality of education) and 5 (on gender equality). Arising from this focus on gender inequality, this blog post describes research findings from the first phase of the THEMIS project (‘Evaluating gender equity and equality in the English language teacher curriculum, ICT policies and learning materials’).
Funded by the British Council Widening Participation programme, THEMIS is coordinated by Liverpool John Moores University in conjunction with four universities from LMICs: the University of Ghana, Igbinedion University in Nigeria, the University of South Africa and the University of Botswana.
The first stage of the project carried out a systematic literature review of research on gender equality in English language teaching and the representation of gender in teaching materials in particular, covering the period 2000 to 2022. Using the PRISMA model, we conducted searches of two databases (Web of Science and Scopus), in addition to contacting scholars and hand searching on the subject.
Following the exclusion of irrelevant and duplicate records, 124 publications were identified arising from peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, book chapters and reports on gender equality in language education.
