The aim of this paper is to illustrate a way of making comparisons of teacher’s manner of teaching with the purpose of deepening the knowledge of the importance of the institutional framing of teaching. We will use a case study of teacher’s manner of teaching in order to identify the manner of teaching the teacher is acting within and the consequences this manner of teaching may have for students’ meaning making in chemistry. The methodological approach used is inspired by pragmatism, a sociocultural perspective on learning and the later works of Wittgenstein. Teachers develop different manners of teaching which characterise their teaching according to Munby & Roberts (1998). A manner of teaching can be characterised and described in terms of the regular patterns manifested in the epistemological moves made by the teacher. The identified manner of teaching will be compared with the selective traditions (Williams, 1973; Englund, 1986; Östman 1995) central in the history of the specific subject. In earlier writings we have shown that teachers’ different epistemological moves affect students’ learning processes (Lidar, Lundqvist & Östman, 2006). In this learning process students also learn the epistemological norms and companion meanings embedded in the practice (Lundqvist & Östman, 2010).