The principles of many international language teacher education programmes are grounded in a relatively homogenous set of "Western" cultural values, even though their participants come from a wide range of different cultural backgrounds. This paper addresses some of the issues surrounding the role of culture in language teacher education and discusses the ways in which cultural phenomena are defined and recognised on such programmes. It argues that language teacher education should acknowledge difference on the part of both language teacher educators and participants on language education programmes. Above all, it argues that language teachers need to develop the competence to function in a range of cultural contexts and to be critically aware of the relationship between culture, context and pedagogic practice.