From a perspective of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) this paper considers the importance of the influence of teachers’ vocabulary in relation to their understanding and development of teaching practices. As the teacher spends most of her/his career teaching inside the classroom so it may be argued that much their CPD takes place there. However little attention has been given to how teachers develop understanding of their everyday practices, of what works and what doesn’t inside the classroom and how these experiences are reflected upon and articulated. How when teaching practices are initiated, tested, adjusted and articulated do teachers reflect on this experience? What spaces do teachers have for dialogical reflection – with themselves and with other colleagues? Teachers are often charged with being agents of change and, in times where curriculum reform is a norm in many educational systems, teacher agency is an important issue. If teacher agencyis understood as the teachers’ active contribution to shaping their work and its conditions – for the overall quality of education (Biesta et al. 2015) then there may be a case for focusing on the development of teacher’s vocabulary. The data in this paper relate to the procedures of constructing a ‘practical argument’ (Fenstermacher & Richardson 1993). As teachers’ agency is always informed by past experiences and beliefs the procedures for working with teachers’ reasoning is explored in this paper.

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