Describing and Prescribing Classroom Practice: Do We Have a Common Language?

Experienced teachers, researchers and mathematics community members, contributed to the documentation of the professional vocabulary of teachers to describe the pedagogical practice of the middle school mathematics classroom. In this paper we use this Australian Lexicon to study which terms teachers deem essential for their classroom practice. We follow with an analysis on whether these essential terms correspond with the language used in commonly disseminated government documents. This examination has given us an insight into the terms that are of great significance and value for our teachers and provided a detailed picture of vocabulary alignment with various official communications.