Although the gender gap in education is not apparent in elementary and secondary education, the gap in tertiary level becomes prominet. One of the causes for this has been indicated as the influence of ‘hidden curriculum’ - the knowledge or information delivered to students without drawing specific attention, thus ‘hidden’.
The purpose of this presentation is to clarify the ‘hidden currilulum’ in SLA field, particularly in secondary school stage. It is implied that illustrations or captions in textbooks are one of the important examples of silently inplanting gender or social norms among students. Those textbooks are approved by the Ministry of Education, so looking deeper into them will reveal stereotypical gender disparity (if any) in Japanese SLA field. The presentation will show the data gathered from surveys and in-depth anlysis of secondary school English textbooks, and the result will give an insight into positive improvement in gender representation in SLA field.