Across international research and policy contexts, teacher education (TE) faces a persistent challenge: novice teachers often struggle to connect theoretical coursework with the complex realities of classroom practice. A growing body of research argues that Teacher Core Practices (TCP) offer a promising response to this problem because they focus not on decontextualized behaviours but on complex, holistic activities that are fundamental to teaching and grounded in disciplinary goals. TCP, such as eliciting student thinking, leading classroom discussions, or giving feedback, are teachable, learnable, and oriented toward improving learning opportunities for all students.

However, despite the international momentum behind TCP, definitional work remains underdeveloped. Frameworks vary in granularity, scope, and subject specificity, and the field continues to grapple with how to conceptualize and teach TCP in ways that avoid rote imitation while cultivating professional judgment. Frameworks of TCP not only differ across countries, institutional contexts, and research environments, but – and this is the study’s assumption – conversations about joint observed teaching practices differ between schoolteachers, teacher educators, and researchers in terms of attention to and interpretation of important incidents as well as in terms of the used terminology, and how TCP are conceived. Hence, this study pursues the research question:

How can teacher core practices be conceptualized as a shared language between research, TE and schools?

Since Lortie (1975) the call for a common professional language about teaching practice has been persistent. This call for a common language has been renewed and connected to the TCP-approach as a turn to more practice-based TE. Attempts to work on shared frameworks across contexts, subjects and grades have been carried out (Grossman et al., 2019). For student teachers to achieve deep understanding of TCP – McDonald and colleagues argue – definitional work of core practices in K12-school should be combined with pedagogies of TE (McDonald et al., 2013). Also, Kloser and colleagues work on the development and refinement of a shared language about instruction combining student teachers’ learning of the core practice in university method courses with their approximated activities (Kloser et al., 2019). Recently Blikstad-Balas and colleagues have argued for the potential of creating a common language of teaching through targeted discussions about video clips (Blikstad-Balas et al., 2024) and Kavanagh and colleagues delimit core practice from best practice (Kavanagh et al. 2024).

By shared language, we do not mean a common language in the sense of a predefined, democratically adopted or one-sided hegemonic vocabulary, but rather a language that emerges from joint conversations observing the same teaching. We talk about shared language when the participants understand each other’s vocabulary and perspectives and can engage in shared discussions about the qualities of teaching.

Data for this study comes from a bigger project between researchers, teacher educators from three teacher educations and schoolteachers from three schools. The TEACOP projects focusses on TCP in the subjects L1 (Danish), mathematics, and natural science. Through three iterative DBR cycles over three semesters, the study aims to identify a culturally situated repertoire of TCP that is grounded in real classroom contingencies, sensitive to disciplinary variation, and aligned with the overarching goal of engaging learning for all. While teacher educators work with their student teachers and schoolteachers work on the same core practices in video clubs all participants meet in one day Research Circles (RC) to discuss jointly their work and experiences. The RC-meetings are documented and audio taped and thus provide a good basis for studying how teachers, teacher educators, and researchers co‑construct meaning around TCP through structured conversations grounded in authentic classroom video.

This ongoing partial study with preliminary results within TEACOP is based on data from the first three RC’s where all participants co‑view video excerpts and deliberate selected TCPs. Data consists of transcribed audio recordings of plenum (3 times 120 minutes) and group conversations (3 times 180 minutes), the presented video clips in the RCs, and written documents with preliminary definitions of TCPs as points of departure for the conversations. To identify how schoolteachers, teacher educators and researchers talk about TCP, what they notice and ascribe meaning and values the study applies phenomenological inspired explorative content analysis (not quantitative) combined with conversation analysis in four steps (Cresswell, 2013; Moustakas, 1994; Steensig, 2015). First, transcripts undergo open, phenomenological coding to capture actors’ intentionality and meaning‑making. Next, a coding procedure is developed to mark agreement, disagreement, reframing, proposal, uptake, and stabilization of TCP elements. Third, imaginative variation identifies alternative framings for observed practices across subjects and contexts. Finally, condensed patterns of robust shared and contested conceptualisations of practice and variations are identified across subjects and contexts. Reliability is supported via full or partial double reading/coding of key segments, and consensus meetings to reconcile analytic memos. Theoretically the study is located in theories of teacher noticing consisting of observing critical events, reasoning by connecting theoretical and practical knowledge and decision making implying professional judgement (Blomberg, Sherin, Renkl, Glogger, & Seidel, 2014; Graf & Rasmussen, 2025; Stahnke, 2025; van Es, Tunney, Goldsmith, & Seago, 2014). Further, we apply the theory of TCP consisting of the three main aspects of decomposing TCP, representing and approximation TCP (Grossman & Fraefel, 2024).

Concluding on the question of how a shared language between different types of professionals can be conceptualized, the preliminary analysis suggests that definitions of Teacher Core Practices emerge dialogically when diverse actors interrogate concrete video evidence and test labels against lived classroom contingencies. Rather than seeking a single, prescriptive taxonomy, the RC conversations stabilize provisional categories whose utility depends on contexts, disciplinary goals, and aims of teaching as e.g. engaging learning for all. By offering descriptors and exemplars as structuring elements joint conversation profit from being open enough for contextual variation yet precise enough to guide teacher judgment and action. Although idiosyncratic interpretations of video represented practice by professionals may occur, Although one can claim that a common language between schoolteachers, teacher educators and researchers would be beneficial for student teachers’ learning to notice and practice professionally, neither a research-hegemonic nor practice-hegemonic language seems to be desirable. Both research-validation and practice-validation seems to enrich the conceptual understanding of TCPs. Joint structured and evidence-rich conversations about shared video-clips between the three professional groups facilitate a shared understanding without filtering differences and specific perspectives out. Thus, the study contributes firstly to the definitional work on TCPs by enriching international TCP frameworks with culturally situated insights in and across subjects, and secondly to the providing of actionable conceptual tools for ambitious teaching in schools as well as to the strengthening the TCP approach where the integration of theory, practice and professional judgement is at the centre of a research- and practice-based teacher education .

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