The Politics of TESOL Education

"In this wonderfully written book, Vai Ramanathan deftly melds together a number of currently crucial areas in language and literacy studies and applies them insightfully to TESOL. The Politics of TESOL Education is a highly innovative and deeply significant contribution to the field." -- James Paul Gee, author of AnIntroduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method
"Professor Ramanathan's approach and audience focus in this volume have been neglected in TESOL teacher education programs, which have come somewhat late to an ideological view of their practices. Consequently, teacher education programs may be failing to ask future teachers to confront with any depth ideological questions inherent in teaching English." -- Ilona Leki, Co-editor of the Journal of Second Language Writing and/or Director of ESL at the University of Tennessee (Quote continued below)
"Ramanathan's thoughtful reflections and scholarly depth of understandings provide both a questioning of disciplinary assumptions and a theoretically grounded yet practical way forward to effecting change where possible and necessary. Using the notion of Thinking Communities, Ramanathan's discussion points the way toward moving disciplinary newcomers, i.e., teacher trainees, in the direction of critically analyzing the discipline itself and some of its assumptions. By tackling head on such disputes as those revolving around genre and cultural essentializing, Ramanathan helps teacher educators see how to include this vital aspect of English teaching in their courses and curriculums." -- Ilona Leki, Co-editor of the Journal of Second Language Writing and/or Director of ESL at the University of Tennessee
"For me, the most helpful sections of The Politics ofTESOL are the third and X chapter, both of which integrate the concepts of critical pedagogies, contrastive rhetoric, genre analysis, and ESL teacher preparation in ways that are innovative and transparent...The Politics of TESOL will help teachers-in-preparation work toward the meta-awareness of what it means to be a professional, the "critical edge" now lacking in the ESL field, that is Ramanathan's objective." -- Joy M. Reid, author of UnderstandingLearning Styles in the Second Language Classroom