Review Spirituality and English language teaching: Religious explorations of teacher identity, pedagogy and context (a review)

original work by MARY SHEPHARD WONG and AHMAR MAHBOOB (EDS.) reviewed by BARRY TOMALIN and DOMINIQUE VOUILLEMIN

A valuable addition to teacher training literature, Spirituality and English Language Teaching contains useful background and information for all language teachers, not just English teachers. But what is spirituality and what is religion and how do they apply to teaching and learning languages? Mary Shephard Wong answers the first question by comparing a variety of definitions and concludes that spirituality describes the concept transcendence of the self, ‘the eternal human yearning to be connected with something larger than our own ego’, and religion describes a set of practices and beliefs that seek to express spirituality. What has this got to do with teaching?

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