Second Language Teacher Education: International Perspectives (review)

This book offers a collection of 18 papers, most of which were originally presented at the Second International Conference on Language Teacher Education, held at the University of Minnesota in May 2001. The contents are organized around four major themes, all very relevant to language teacher education: (1) the knowledge base of L2 teacher education, (2) contexts of L2 teacher education, (3) collaborations in L2 teaching, and (4) L2 teacher education in practice. However, what first strikes the reader is the mismatch between the 'international perspectives' proclaimed in the title and the fact that most of the contributions are US-centred. Fifteen of the contributions were written by scholars working in US institutions, and only one comes from a non-English speaking country. A look at the settings where the studies are actually conducted shows that only five of them relate to non-US realities, and only two are set in an EFL context. This wouldn't be a problem had the editors not chosen to use the word 'international' in their title, probably with the intention of attracting a wider audience, and had the cover of the book not also displayed a world map. Avoiding the word 'international' would have more accurately reflected the book's contents, some of which are certainly enlightening and deserve the attention of readers interested in language teaching and teacher education.

The book opens with Tarone and Allwright's critique of a previous article by Freeman and Johnson (1998). The chapter provides a useful terminological distinction and outlines two possible fallacies in teacher education programs:'the academia fallacy,' that is, the naive assumption that providing teacher learners with theoretical knowledge will enable them to perform their teaching activity successfully; and 'the noninterface fallacy,' the assumption that teacher education will happen only within the language classroom. The authors criticize Freeman and Johnson's apparent support for the noninterface fallacy, and they further claim that different types of teachers require different types of training. Freeman and Johnson respond briefly to Tarone and Allwright's criticisms in chapter 2, although they do not go into further detail beyond a few clarifications of their original intended meaning. Chapter 3 by Scarino reports on a study of a French teacher's introspections on the assessment of two students' writing assignments in Australia. Although the title of the contribution points the reader to values and ethical dispositions as components of teacher knowledge, Scarino fails to make an effective case for the existence of 'ethical knowing,' simply presenting some excerpts of the teacher's views on two students and their compositions. Only in the final paragraph is teacher education mentioned, which appears to be a concession to the overall topic of the volume. Johnston, Pawan, and Mahan-Taylor present a good chapter on in-service teachers' professional development, albeit – as acknowledged by the authors – limited in the scope of the research, all data coming exclusively from a single semi-structured interview with an expatriate teacher. This chapter is reported to be part of a larger study involving 12 graduates from a US master's degree program, which undoubtedly will be worth reading. The last chapter within the first theme, also authored by Freeman and Johnson, considers the link between teacher knowledge and student learning. The authors centre their analysis on the role played by the overhead projector in one teacher's classes, but they do not provide a thorough analysis, except for a brief, somewhat vague description of a task involving students' identification of instances of learning. The authors conclude by claiming that any approach to teacher knowledge and student learning must go beyond measures of student performance and incorporate social values and beliefs.

The book's second theme starts with a thought-provoking contribution by Shohamy that accounts for the deep impact of tests on society. Although this idea is more extensively developed in a previous work (Shohamy, 2001), this chapter is useful in that it shows how teachers can act as either 'servants of the system' or...