The impetus for this book arose from a course we taught jointly in 2006 as part of a professional doctorate program in applied linguistics from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, to a group of Mexican doctoral students meeting at the designated teaching location in the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico. In organizing the course content around a selection of key readings on second language teacher education (SLTE), we realized that there were few volumes available that presented a collection offering a broad and contemporary overview of current debates in this field. It became apparent that a volume of the present kind would provide a valuable introduction for those who are both specialist readers and new practitioners interested in developments in the field of SLTE. It would build on an early collection of work in this area (Richards and Nunan 1990) in that it would provide a state-of-the-art survey of current issues, debates, and approaches in contemporary SLTE.We are grateful to our Mexican students for warmly supporting this idea when we first broached it with them, for their enthusiasm in discussing their own concerns and interests in SLTE, and for their anticipation of the publication of this collection.

The field of SLTE has now become well established within applied linguistics and TESOL. Many undergraduate degrees now offer one or more courses in SLTE, and there are also masters and other postgraduate courses with SLTE as a primary focus.

We anticipate that the readership for the volume will be those with a broad interest in SLTE issues – preservice and in-service teachers, including those completing undergraduate and postgraduate programs, teacher trainers and educators, professional development coordinators and administrators, and researchers and academics interested in knowing more about current approaches, theories, and practices.

In putting together the volume, we envisaged it as a companion to the Cambridge Guide to TESOL (Nunan and Carter 2001), which similarly offers a survey of current debates. The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education comprises 30 original chapters by key writers working and researching in the field of SLTE. The chapters are grouped into seven thematic sections.