Global Poverty Education in German EFL Textbooks

This chapter presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of 36 EFL textbooks, examining how global poverty is represented and taught in German lower secondary education. A quantitative study of 455 poverty-related tasks reveals systematic patterns in place, time, demographics, causes, and solutions. Poverty is most frequently depicted in the USA, Great Britain, and South Africa, with additional focus on developing countries. Representations overwhelmingly emphasize urban and contemporary poverty, disproportionately affecting children and people of color. Causation is commonly attributed to local factors, particularly economic elites and people of European descent, while solutions are framed primarily as charity, migration, or limited government action. Poverty staging relies heavily on fictionalized narrative input, often designed by publishers rather than drawn from authentic sources. Pedagogical activities focus largely on information gathering and empathy, with minimal opportunities for critical inquiry or learner action. Qualitative analysis further highlights moralistic framings, reliance on charity, and questionable sustainability of proposed solutions. Variation across school forms and publishers is limited, with recurring patterns of simplification and distortion. Overall, the findings suggest that German EFL textbooks present poverty in reductive and ideologically loaded ways, reinforcing moral narratives rather than fostering structural understanding or critical engagement.