Social awareness and Project-Based Language Learning in Secondary Education: Sexism in the EFL Classroom

This work arises from having observed the shortcomings in the English Foreign Language (EFL) classroom in terms of the level of awareness and visibility of the social problem of sexism. Thus, it was decided to do some research in order to detect whether the materials used in the EFL classroom over the last few decades have followed an evolutionary process regarding this aspect. After analyzing numerous expert studies on the subject, it was evident that there seems to be indeed a positive evolution towards gender equality in the classroom. However, this process seems to be slow and not very significant yet. For this reason, it was decided to create a proposal composed of a series of didactic materials that were designed with the purpose of taking the first steps towards awakening awareness of gender equity in the students. Thusly, these co-educational materials could be used in order to increase the visibility of this social issue within the classroom, as well as to help these cross-curricular subjects gain more value and weight in the curriculum. The EFL subject brings us much closer to this purpose, as the English language is a fundamental universal communication tool that will enable us to reach a considerably wide audience. Moreover, since this proposal has a strong communicative character, it will be brought into the classroom from a Communicative Learning and Teaching (CLT) perspective, and Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL). This methodology will be the ideal approach in which to frame this dissertation, since it will facilitate reflection on the issue of sexism in learners through an interaction process between them.