Baurain, B. (2015). Religious faith and teacher knowledge in English language teaching. New Castle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Religious faith in the English language classroom is not a new issue to international organizations that support and send teachers of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) around the world. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and miscommunication among professionals regarding the nature and practice of those teachers, specifically Christian teachers, who actively and purposefully live out their spiritual beliefs in their teaching contexts. Religious Faith and Teacher Knowledge in English Language Teaching is Baurain’s ongoing contribution to this conversation. Based on interviews, qualitative methods, and instrumental case studies, the author carefully develops a framework for evaluating the influence that personal religious beliefs have on one’s professional teacher knowledge. The goal of Baurain’s study is a deeper understanding of the permeation or diffusion of personal religious beliefs throughout teacher knowledge and TESOL professionalism (p. 75). The essential question of the study is: How do overseas Christian ESOL teachers describe putting their religious beliefs into practice in their profession?

The book begins with a summary of each chapter, introducing the reader to not only the organization of the research project but also the conflict within the TESOL community regarding the issue of teacher-beliefs and how they affect relationships, identity, classroom decisions, and pedagogy in general. Baurain argues for the inclusion of personal religious beliefs alongside teacher beliefs or teacher knowledge in language education (p. 17). Citing Borg (2003), Baurain describes teachers as “active, thinking decision-makers who make instructional choices by drawing on complex, practically-oriented, personalized, and context-sensitive networks of knowledge, thoughts, and beliefs” (p. 81). Baurain goes to great lengths in Chapter 1 to set the stage for this discussion by defining important terms and providing background through his extensive and relevant review of available literature. As a Christian, this reviewer found the literature review to be extremely significant and an excellent resource for future reference.

Chapter 2 is an overview of the qualitative study itself. The author describes the participants, the means and methods used, and the study’s significance. The responding teacher-participants were teaching in Southeast Asia at the time of the study. Their experience as English language teachers ranged from first year novice to an experienced 7-year teacher. All teachers were TESOL certificate graduates.

The third chapter summarizes the themes that emerged from the interviews and scenarios that were presented to the participants. Professionalism, relationality, and witness were stand-out concepts that were identified in the study and are carefully discussed and defined. The fourth chapter makes it all very personal through the case-studies. Personal profiles of four of the participants were chosen to describe how they live out their faith in the practice of their profession.

Of the three major concepts that the study revealed, witness appeared most often in the author’s cross-case comparisons. Chapter 5 dives deeply into the issues of distinctiveness and witness, applied theology and witness, and professionalism and witness. Baurain effectively takes the obscure and often confusing idea of witness and breaks it down into bite-sized chunks, making it less daunting to the reader. The final and sixth chapter revisits the question of this qualitative study and makes suggestions for continued discussion. The inward nature of the findings presents limitations to a study such as this, but it also reinforces the complexity of the issue (p. 134). Baurain makes the case for further research by suggesting more observations and interviews, including more ethnographic approaches with the caveat that researchers take care to analyze themselves as those who are collecting the data. The book concludes with an appendix of the research protocols, an extensive bibliography, and index.

Religious Faith and Teacher Knowledge in English Language Teaching is based on a doctoral dissertation and often reads like one. Nonetheless, for those who are interested in the role of faith in the TESOL context, this short book (under 150 pages) is a worthwhile contribution to the growing number of spiritually-oriented resources becoming available to the TESOL community (e.g., Wong & Mahboob, in press). As Christians and teachers of other beliefs model and communicate their faith, students, regardless of their specific religion, can be equipped with the language and freedom to communicate that which is deep and dear in their own hearts. The book is not without its flaws, but does provide more subject matter for continued discussion, debate, and personal reflection about the role faith plays in the English teaching community.

Janice Crouch has taught international students in both EFL and ESL settings for the past 10 years. Her most recent position was academic coordinator for a private intensive English program. She is also a volunteer teacher in a large church-based English program for refugees and immigrants. Teaching pronunciation and accent reduction is her first love, with teaching academic reading and writing following close behind.