Dear Colleagues,

Are language teacher education programs (both preservice and in-service) sufficient for preparing and empowering language teachers for the complicated and specialized language pedagogy in 21^st century? Can they trigger or promote teacher creativity? With the introduction of many innovative technological breakthroughs and advances which directly target or influence language teaching and learning, many of the training and preparation or promotion programs do not satisfy the ever-growing foreign or second language teaching requirements of teachers as generation Z’s access to and familiarity with many of those resources is much higher than that of foreign language teachers especially regarding technology use. As a result, a role of preparation and promotion programs becomes inevitably important.

This special issue tries to focus on aspects of teacher education programs (pre-service and in-service) which seem to be neglected at the present time to satisfy these emerging needs of foreign language teacher and present a valuable collection of research including previous experiences and future provisions and recommendations for aim-setting and designing such programs. Special attention can be given to language teacher creativity and innovation as one of the most important features of education in 21^st century.

Farzaneh Dehghan

Foreign language teacher education; Teacher's professional development; Teacher creativity; Language pedagogy; Teacher training; Teachers' in-service courses; Teachers' pre-service programs