Higher-Order Thinking Skills; Cultural Content; Gender
Representation; Kurikulum Merdeka.
E. This study aims to comprehensively analyse and compare the integration of
critical thinking skills, cultural content, and gender representation in two
eleventh-grade English textbooks: the government-issued English for Change
and the commercially published Pathway to English. A qualitative
multidimensional content analysis was employed. The findings reveal that both
textbooks align with the Kurikulum Merdeka by dedicating over 60% of reading
tasks to Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). However, English for Change
radically eliminates the Remembering (C1) level to focus heavily on advanced
cognition (74.42% HOTS), whereas Pathway to English retains Lower-Order
Thinking Skills (33.7%) as cognitive scaffolding alongside its HOTS tasks
(66.3%). Culturally, both materials predominantly feature the Source Culture to
support national character building. English for Change is heavily localized
(58.27% Source Culture), while Pathway to English presents a more
heterogeneous landscape with a substantial Target Culture representation
(27.2%). Nevertheless, both materials share a common deficiency in
marginalizing International Culture at approximately 5%. Concerning gender
representation, the textbooks exhibit diverging ideological stances. English for
Change actively dismantles patriarchal stereotypes through a progressive
"female-firstness" linguistic policy and the inclusion of empowered female role
models. In contrast, while Pathway to English achieves quantitative visibility
balance, it subtly retains traditional occupational stereotypes. Ultimately, these
variations suggest that publishers actively interpret curriculum mandates rather
than merely transmit them, implying that educators must act as critical mediators
to bridge ideological gaps in ELT materials