Teachers roles and training in intercultural education

Foreign language degree programmes have been engaged, more than ever, in an active dialogue with other disciplines (ethnography, anthropology, business, the arts among others) in an attempt to enrich their methodologies and content of the subject. In addition, these programmes have started to be delivered in innovative ICT-based environments, which have served as well as new means of communication in both local and international settings. These recent developments have enhanced the foreign language learning experience, but they have also highlighted important implications for the roles and responsibilities of foreign language teachers. This paper investigates to what extent new pedagogical theories on foreign language teaching have had an impact on our established models of teacher education. It focuses in particular on how effectively the intercultural agenda has been incorporated in language teacher education programmes. Our conclusions highlight a disparity between the speed at which the foreign language curriculum has been innovated and the impact this has had in teacher education. Unless teachers are given the opportunity to develop their own skills to help students to become intercultural speakers, the development of intercultural competence (IC) will remain as an objective yet to be fully achieved