Introduction

This chapter lays out the purposes and premises of this edited book, which seeks to bridge the gaps across a few related subfields that include online education, English as a de facto global language, and language teacher education. The current chapter describes recent developments and opportunities related to online language teacher education (OLTE) at the nexus of online education, evolving pluricentric views of English around the world, and language teacher education. The chapter then provides brief synopses of the contributions that compose the two main sections of the book: Part I: Paradigm Shifts and Best Practices and Part II: Pitfalls and Promises. These overarching themes are reflected in nine empirical studies that address varied aspects of different OLTE programs in action from six different countries: Britain, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Spain, and the United States (i.e., Maryland, Nevada, Illinois, and Indiana).