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Commercially produced educational materials often reflect the pedagogical beliefs and culture(s) of the content developers. While many teachers involved in teaching English as a foreign language have relied on commercially published content in the past, the advent of ubiquitous technology has afforded them the ability to create content that is contextualised and to share it with other educators across the globe. The purpose of this study is to investigate cultural determinants which affect the pedagogical decisions of teachers when designing content.

This case study, conducted at a higher educational institution in the Gulf, addresses the issues that arise when cultures or ideologies of educators as material developers are different to that of the target audience. Three semi-structured interviews with teachers were conducted in an effort to understand cultural determinants that influence decision-making about pedagogy when creating in-house content to motivate undergraduate students on an English language program in the United Arab Emirates.

The results of this study indicated that the participants maintained mainly essentialist perspectives of local cultures and sub-cultures and their thinking in content creation was not all that different to that of commercial publishers.

This study holds implications for awareness-raising and pedagogical training for educators involved in in-house content development.

This case study addresses an area that has been under-researched in the Gulf region.