Language Teacher Education fo r a Global Society: A Modular Model fo r Knowing, Analyzing, Recognizing, Doing and Seeing Author: B. Kumaravadivelu Publisher: Routledge, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-415-87738-1 Pages: 148 Language Teacher Education for a Global Society: A Modular Model for Know­ ing, Analyzing, Recognizing, Doing, and Seeing is another important contribution by Professor B. Kumaravadivelu from the Department of Linguistics and Language De- velopment at San Jose State University's College of Humanities and the Arts. Just like Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching (2003) or Under- standing Language Teaching: From Method to Postmethod (2006), this book is a state-of-the-art, perfect response to the call for providing language teacher educa­ tion models in the times of rapid economic, cultural, and educational globalization. The structure of the book is very clear. It consists of a preface, followed by sev- en chapters. Although not very long (148 pages), the book succinctly presents a skele- ton for second/foreign language teacher education comprising five modules referred to by the acronym KARDS (Knowing, Analyzing, Recognizing, Doing, and Seeing). In the first chapter, the author offers the rationale for his model, resorting to five global "post" perspectives (postnational, postmodern, postcolonial, posttransmission, and 449 postmethod) and three "p" principles (particularity, practicality, and possibility). The next five chapters explain in detail the particular modules of KARDS, which signify particular competencies in the contemporary language teacher's repertoire: "Know­ ing" - how to build a professional, personal, and procedural knowledge base (Chapter 2), "Analyzing" - how to analyze learner needs, motivation, and autonomy (Chapter 3), "Recognizing" - how to recognize one's own identities, beliefs, and values as a teacher (Chapter 4), "Doing" - how to teach, theorize, and dialogize (Chapter 5), and "Seeing" - how to see one's teaching from the perspectives of the learner, teacher, and observer (Chapter 6). The final chapter provides the culmination of the model; Kumaravadivelu discusses possible practical implications of conceiving and delivering language teaching models that are sensitive to local contexts, reminding the reader that his modular suggestion is only meant to provide guidelines that teacher educa­ tion programmers might take into account. There are a number of cogent reasons why Kumaravadivelu's monograph makes an important addition to the literature on language teacher education. First of all, the book references current knowledge of other disciplines affecting language teacher education. The model presented does not favor any one particu­ lar module; for example, the teacher's knowledge about language, traditionally understood as supreme, is given equal footing with her ability to promote learner autonomy or recognize the values underlying her personal approach to language teaching. This makes the model extremely timely, since the positivist paradigm is still dominant in many an educational context, and despite numerous voices argu- ing for revisiting the roles assumed by language teachers, the traditional role of the teacher as knowledge provider is, regrettably, still popular in school realities. It should also be added that few language acquisition-related books are so logically and comprehensively written. The language teacher preparation scaffold is very well presented, which makes it easy for the reader to grasp and retain. This advantage cannot be ignored as good understanding of the concept affects its implementation in the sense that what seems a vital element in the interdepend- ent module model is more likely to be considered as realistic and doable, and thus transferred into practice. This is an important argument, because many otherwise viable contributions in the field are frequently regarded as too theoretical for practical application. This ability to write in such a comprehensible and logical way demonstrates the scholarly ingeniousness of Kumaravadivelu, who is able to con- vey so much in such a straightforward way. A feature contributing to the "friendly" aspect of the book for the teaching context is a set of tasks presented at the end of each module consisting of "Rapid Reader Responses," "Reflective Tasks," and "Exploratory Projects." Rapid reader responses are four questions demanding of the reader rapid answers about the contents of the chapters, and thanks to them the reader can immediately see what needs rereading or - an innovative step to make readers think about the book - what questions the chapter leaves unanswered. Reflective tasks aim at 450 eliciting more reflective and less spontaneous responses, and can motivate the reader to look at the familiar issues in a new and more critical way. Exploratory projects, in turn, can make students investigate their local contexts and even initi- ate larger research studies. It can be said that this approach of presenting theoret­ ical input supplemented by activities prompting readers' responses at both deep- er and more superficial levels is a very supportive modern approach to writing a book to serve students, in-service teachers, and teacher educators. Thanks to such a layout, the book enables readers to, using the author's words, "theorize what they practice and practice what they theorize." The book seems so successful that finding its drawbacks is not an easy task. But however attracted to its content and structure as I am, I cannot resist the feel- ing that at times all these diagrams, alliterating names of principles, symmetry, well- balanced choices of terminology, and so forth, might be a product of coining the nomenclature for the sake of coining it or going for a good-looking textual structure rather than communicating a first-rate piece of the author's input, be it his knowledge or his experience. On the other hand, Kumaravadivelu presents a modu­ lar model, and how can you discuss such a model in a way appealing to the reader without relying upon such devices as regularity, logicality, and symmetry? I very much recommend this book to all those involved in education who want to see language teacher education restructured in the face of accelerating globalization and the changing role of the teacher. As the awareness of these is­ sues grows, I would suggest that educators read B. Kumaravadivelu's 2012 book, in which his response to these challenges in the form of a modular model of lan­ guage teacher education for a global society is introduced and presented in detail. Reviewed by Dorota Werbińska Pomeranian University, Słupsk, Poland werbinsk@pro.onet.pl 451 mailto:werbinsk@pro.onet.pl