Purpose of the Study

Ultimately, the purpose of this study is to benefit students by making the materials they use in the classroom more available and more effective. Comparing factors and experiences across projects can lead to a better understanding of the problems, solutions, and topics that arise during the creation of those materials. Châtry-Komarek (1996) states this well: "Every book you work on will be a challenge in its own way, and you will have to find individual, tailor-made solutions in each case. Keep in touch with professionals in the world of publishing, gather your own documentation, examine the contents and form of other printed materials, in particular textbooks, to try to help improve the efficiency of schools in your own country.
The goal of this study is to jumpstart this learning process for myself and others. It is a way to get in touch with professionals in the field, and through writing, to put them in touch with each other. To my knowledge, this is the first time anyone has used a comparative approach for this topic. The purpose of this study is not to generate a set of best practices for each of these fields, but to get an overview of the process in non-dominant languages. The study will establish broad themes and common issues, as well as describing encapsulating incidents that illustrate aspects of the materials development process. This improved understanding will be helpful in planning and executing materials development projects, as well as training future education consultants who work on them. 

Elements of the Study

The elements of the study are the people, events, and activities involved in the process of creating teaching and learning materials in non-dominant languages. To begin, the researcher will gather information on:
One of the desired outcomes of this study is to shine a light on blind spots within the field, so the elements in the study will not be limited to these topics. New discoveries that come up during one interview may inform the course of the interviews later on.

Scope

The scope of this study is limited to textbook creation for non-dominant languages, specifically through processes that involve international agencies and/or ministries of education and teams of international and local educators. Information about the work of publishing houses, while interesting, is likely to be unavailable through the professional networks accessed in this study. The creation of teaching and learning materials for dominant languages is likewise out of bounds, largely because the processes are assumed to be very different from those for non-dominant languages, and more research has already been done on it. Given the comparative nature of the study, the scope will be considered complete when the interviews reach "saturation," meaning that topics and ideas within new interviews heavily overlap with old interviews and few new ideas arise. This is an indication that the creation process has been covered in the length and depth required for a thorough analysis.

Definitions 

Non-dominant Languages

Scholars in the field of education and linguistics have begun using the term non-dominant languages (NDLs) to refer to “the languages or language varieties spoken in a given state that are not considered the most prominent in terms of number, prestige or official use by the government and/or the education system (Benson and Kosonen, 2013, 1). On the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), the languages involved in this study would be at levels 2-5, which includes provincial, wider communication, educational, and developing languages (Lewis et al., 2015). Languages higher than 2 on the scale are dominant languages, and most likely have robust publishing systems that are different from the ones used for non-dominant languages. Languages lower than five are not available in written form, and therefore are not usable in most education systems, so they would not be included. These considerations will be used as guidelines, rather than hard rules, as “dominance” is a relative concept. For example, in Malawi, seven indigenous languages have “official” standing, but as of 2008, only one was actually used in instructional materials. If there has been a recent materials design project in the remaining six languages, it would be of interest in this study. 

Teaching and learning materials

Children in primary school need a variety of teaching and learning materials to become fluent readers, including primers or basal readers, integrated readers, subject-specific texts, storybooks, and teacher's guides. Some of these fit the dictionary definition of a textbook as "a book that contains detailed information about a subject for people who are studying that subject" \cite{noauthor_textbook_nodate}, but many do not, so the broader term "teaching and learning materials" will be used to refer to them collectively. This study will include most books and other materials created for a specific educational environment, as long they were created in a non-dominant language. Different combinations of materials are appropriate in different contexts, so including a wider variety of texts will also assist in finding a sufficient number of projects to study.

Materials Creation

This study will mostly use the term “creation” to describe the process of planning, drafting, editing, and approving textbooks. This word was chosen to differentiate this process from the related process of design, which may connote the narrower process that produces the visual elements of the textbook. As previously stated, this study will focus on particular types of textbook development teams that include both international and local members, and these will tend to occur outside of publishing houses

Educational Consultants

All of the textbook design projects encountered so far had input from a specific class of educators that consult on materials creation projects outside of their own culture. These people are not native speakers of the non-dominant language that is used in the textbooks, but may speak it as an additional language. They typically have a high level of education in fields such as curriculum development, literacy, or linguistics. They may come from the country where the materials are being created, or from elsewhere. The participants in this study are educational consultants who worked on teaching materials in non-dominant languages.

Local Educators

These are people who speak the non-dominant language used in the materials as a native language, and who also participate in the educational realm in some way, as teachers, supervisors, curriculum leaders or professors. Materials creation projects generally involve at least some local language educators because they have both knowledge of the language and experience in local classrooms that is needed to design appropriate textbooks.