ABSTRACT
This chapter describes work that was conducted as part of an international project documenting the professional vocabulary of middle-school mathematics teachers across ten countries. Here we share the processes and challenges involved in developing a U.S. Lexicon of middle-school mathematics teaching and learning. Given the nature of our local context and the varied instruction that occurs across districts and states, we did not endeavor to develop a comprehensive lexicon but rather to document a slice of vocabulary at a particular moment in time and, in the process, identify features of U.S. teachers’ professional language. In this chapter, we describe four phases of lexicon development including viewing of classroom videos, conducting local focus groups, distributing a national survey, and categorizing resulting terms. We then present the organization of the 99 terms in this U.S. Lexicon, discuss the structure and size of the lexicon, and highlight four key features of the included terms. We conclude with a reflection on the limitations of this lexicon and directions for future research.
