ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a brief history of language teacher education focusing in particular on the sub-disciplinary area now known as teacher cognition followed by a discussion of persistent challenges faced by LTE programmes, including emerging areas of debate and calls for future research that will continue to inform the programmatic choices that shape the field. Language teacher education has emerged only relatively recently, both as a professional activity and as a focus of research. A persistent challenge for language teacher education is to create learning/teaching opportunities that foster the development of language teacher pedagogical content knowledge. Well-known frameworks of language proficiency such as the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines are often not within the reach of the teachers who work in large-scale public sector institutional settings.
