This book offers theoretical foundations and practical proposals for the development of critical cultural awareness and intercultural communication competence among prospective and practising foreign language/culture educators. It proposes an enhanced cultural and political role for educators in this area.

Manuela Guilherme is a Senior Researcher at the Centro de Estudos Sociais at the University of Coimbra. She conceptualised and coordinated the ICOPROMO project on which this book is based . She is the author of Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World: Foreign Language Education as cultural politics, Multilingual Matters, 2002.

Manuela Guilherme has been a teacher of foreign languages and cultures for the past 30 years both at secondary school and university levels, in Portugal as well as in Great Britain. She has also been a teacher trainer and a researcher in this area for the past 15 years. The research she presents in this book was awarded the 2001 Emma Birkmaier Award by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Modern Language Journal and her contribution to the study of language and culture worldwide was also recognised by the California Language Teaching Profession.

This is a timely and important book. The work is profound and rigorous in its analysis, soundly based in empirical research and above all lucid and accessible in its style; essential reading, I'd say for anyone with an academic interest in the teaching of foreign languages.

Margaret Azevedo, Lecturer, Stanford Teacher Education Program, Stanford University, USA:

Critical Citizens for an Intercultural World should be on the personal reading list of every foreign language educator and required reading for those preparing to teach a second language and its culture.