Conceptualizing
Vocabulary Teachers’ Competencies (VTC) Framework:
A Response to
Green and Coxhead (2026)
Mark Feng Teng[1]*
Wei Lun Wong2
|
*Correspondence: markteng@hsu.edu.hk |
|
1 The
Hang Seng University of Hong Kong , China 2 Faculty
of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia,
Malaysia |
Abstract
The
Vocabulary Teachers’ Competencies (VTC)
framework fills a gap by specifying 18 competencies across knowledge of
vocabulary research and resources, vocabulary analysis and instructional
skills, and professional and socio-cultural capabilities. It also carries a
second, quieter representation, a Möbius strip signaling
continuity, interdependence and return. This conceptual article takes that
second representation seriously. It identifies five frictions teacher educators
meet when using the framework, uneven grain size, unexplained overlap,
competencies that depend on institutional opportunity rather than individual
capability, a wide intended population, and the late placement of equity. It
then proposes a complementary process architecture: a recursive continuum of
vocabulary-teaching enactment, with four overlapping functional zones
(lexical-research foundations; pedagogical reasoning and selection; diagnostic
and adaptive design; instructional enactment and professional renewal), a
cross-cutting socio-cultural orientation, and feedback returning from teaching
to judgement and knowledge. All 18 competencies are mapped onto this
architecture, and each is sharpened for use. The model does not replace the VTC’s content specification. It explains how the
competencies work together, and why teacher education should teach lexical
knowledge alongside decisions about learners, texts and evidence rather than
before them.
Keywords:
teacher
competence; vocabulary instruction; pedagogical content knowledge; teacher
education; conceptual framework; enactment
1. Introduction: why the shape of a framework matters
The Vocabulary Teachers’ Competencies (VTC) framework developed by Green
and Coxhead (2026) responds to a gap.
Vocabulary is central to language, literacy and disciplinary learning, yet
teacher preparation has lacked a consolidated account of what effective
vocabulary teaching requires (Teng, 2023); other areas of practice
have acquired such frameworks, for instance, teacher digital competence (Falloon,
2020), while vocabulary, despite a mature research base, has
not. Drawing on an integrative review, the VTC specifies 18 competencies across
three domains: knowledge of vocabulary research and resources; vocabulary
analysis and instructional skills; and professional and socio-cultural
capabilities. It makes the field’s dispersed expectations
visible, teachable and discussable.
This conceptual article asks a complementary
question. If the VTC tells us what teachers should be able to mobilize, how are
those resources related when a teacher is actually planning, teaching and
responding? The three-domain presentation suggests a categorical answer:
knowledge is acquired, skills translate it into action, and professional
capabilities govern the wider conduct of practice. Yet the Möbius-strip
metaphor suggests continuity rather than separation. The VTC contains two
organizing logics: a categorical taxonomy and a recursive pathway. Only the
first has been elaborated.
The distinction matters because knowledge does not
enter teaching intact. Teachers must interpret learners, texts, purposes and
institutional conditions before knowledge can inform action, e.g., the
transformation Shulman (1986, 1987) named pedagogical content
knowledge (PCK). Teacher knowledge is often organized by its function in
practice rather than by its epistemic type (Ball et al.,
2008; Depaepe et al., 2013), and knowledge closer to
instructional reasoning is more consequential for classroom processes than
general content knowledge alone (Baumert et al., 2010; Kunter et al.,
2013). In reading specifically, teachers’ knowledge of literacy concepts relates to student
growth largely through what it enables them to do in lessons (Adi, 2025; Tabata-Sandom
& Ikeda, 2024). Blömeke et al. (2015) draw the general
conclusion: competence is best modelled as a continuum running from
dispositions, through situation-specific perception, interpretation and
decision-making, to observable performance.
This conceptual article therefore appraises the
VTC as it stands, identifying where its architecture strains under the uses it
invites, and proposes a recursive continuum of vocabulary-teaching enactment:
four overlapping functional zones, a cross-cutting socio-cultural orientation,
and explicit feedback from teaching back to judgement and knowledge. The
continuum does not rank competencies by importance and is not a developmental
staircase. It distinguishes them by functional proximity to situated action, by
how much a competency requires the teacher to interpret a particular learner,
text, purpose or classroom response. Because the argument concerns use as much
as theory, one ordinary classroom case runs through the paper (Box 1).
2. What the VTC achieves, and what kind of claim it
makes
The framework’s most important contribution is to treat
vocabulary teaching as a field with its own knowledge base, technical work and
ethical responsibilities. In many programs vocabulary appears as a minor
element inside literacy or general language teaching, a fortnight, a lecture, a
handout of strategies (Teng, 2023). The VTC makes the breadth
of the expertise visible, and the evidence its review assembles warrants that
breadth: vocabulary instruction improves vocabulary knowledge reliably and
comprehension more conditionally (Cervetti et
al., 2023; Elleman et al., 2009); morphological instruction
supports literacy outcomes (Teng, 2026); and academic vocabulary
functions less as a list to be learned than as a set of tools for making
meaning in disciplinary text (Nagy & Townsend, 2012).
Two further strengths deserve emphasis. The
framework is non-prescriptive: it names research-supported pedagogies without
requiring one branded model, which matters because learner age, curriculum,
language background and purpose change what counts as an appropriate
application. And it extends beyond content and technique to professional
learning, collaboration, differentiation, equity and inclusion, positioning
vocabulary teaching as a continuing and socially situated practice (Clarke
& Hollingsworth, 2002). The attention to language,
identity and power is significant: word knowledge is not socially neutral, and
decisions about which registers and varieties are valued can expand access or
reproduce deficit assumptions about students whose home language practices
differ from school norms (Flores & Rosa, 2015).
The framework’s evidential status should nevertheless be stated
plainly rather than treated as a criticism. VTC explains why the 18 topics
matter; it cannot establish that three domains are the best organization, that
the set is exhaustive, or that users interpret the wording consistently, nor
does it establish performance levels, developmental order or causal relations
with student outcomes. Equal allocation across domains creates visual balance,
but balance is not equivalence: Domain 3 carries curriculum planning, professional
learning, motivation, assessment, feedback, collaboration, differentiation and
equity in the same six slots. The VTC is best described, for now, as an
expert-informed content framework with preliminary content validity: a strong
reference point, not a basis for total scores, domain scores or certification
without studies of interpretation, scoring, reliability, fairness and
consequences.
3. Two organizing logics inside
one framework
The distinction among knowledge, skills and
dispositions is durable, and the VTC explicitly relates its domains to these
categories from instructional-design research (Richey et al.,
2001). A categorical structure supports coverage and
accountability. It also risks reifying boundaries that practice crosses
constantly. Selecting high-utility words is classified as a skill, yet the
decision rests on claims about frequency, text criticality, generativity and
how word knowledge develops. Understanding research-supported pedagogy is
classified as knowledge, yet it is meaningful only when a teacher can judge
when and how a principle applies. The same professional act routinely involves
theoretical knowledge, interpretation, ethical judgement and performance at
once, as the framework itself concedes when it states that PCK is embedded
across all three domains.
This is the difficulty PCK was introduced to
address. Shulman (1986, 1987) defined a professional form
of understanding created when subject matter is represented and adapted for
learners: not another store of information beside content knowledge, but a
transformation performed for teaching. Ball et al. (2008) divided mathematical
knowledge for teaching by function rather than epistemic type; Baumert et al. (2010) found that content
knowledge and PCK had different relations with instruction and student
learning; Kaiser et al. (2017) showed that cognitive and
situated accounts of teacher competence measure different things. It implies
that disciplinary knowledge becomes professionally consequential through
reasoning that connects it to tasks, learners and representations.
The VTC framework develops from words and
language, through vocabulary and literacy development, to selecting words,
implementing instruction and assessing learning, a movement from conceptual
resources towards situated decisions. The Möbius strip avoids a hierarchical
pyramid, but a metaphor of seamless integration does not specify how knowledge
becomes judgement, how classroom feedback changes future knowledge, which
capabilities mediate between others, or where socio-cultural commitments enter
a decision. A teacher educator sequencing a module cannot act on it. The
metaphor should be kept as a mnemonic and supplemented by a process model that
makes its implicit claims explicit. The 18 competencies remain the content
specification; what changes is the account of their relationship. This
distinction between content specification and process architecture is the
central move in this conceptual article.
4. Five frictions teacher
educators meet in use
First, the competencies are not the same size.
Some name a bounded capability, such as analyzing
word structures. Others bundle several: teaching; student interest, assessment
and feedback; identity, diversity, equity, inclusion and power. A teacher can
be strong in one part of a compound competency and weak in another, which makes
any single judgement uninterpretable and domain comparison meaningless.
Second, overlap is mostly productive but
unexplained. This is not a defect. PCK is intrinsically integrative. What is
missing is a statement of the changing function of repeated content: morphology
is conceptual knowledge of a system; later it is the analysis of a target word;
then it becomes representation and instruction; and then finally it supports
transfer across a family. Naming that transformation turns apparent redundancy
into developmental coherence, and gives a teacher educator a defensible reason
to return to morphology four times.
Third, some competencies require opportunity, not
only capability. Collaboration, long-term curriculum development, and
professional renewal depend on timetable, leadership, roles and access to
credible research. A rubric that ignores opportunity will label teachers
deficient for conditions outside their control; conversely, self-report will
overestimate competence where performance evidence is absent, a documented risk
in literacy, where teachers’ confidence in their
word-level knowledge is poorly calibrated to their actual knowledge (Cunningham
et al., 2004). The framework should distinguish individual
capability, enacted performance and enabling conditions, and record which of
the three an assessment has sampled.
Fourth, one framework serves several teaching
populations. Early literacy teachers need oral–print mappings and beginning word recognition;
secondary subject teachers face technical terminology and disciplinary
discourse; additional-language teachers work with cross-linguistic knowledge
and very different exposure histories. A stable core plus contextual profiles,
specifying priority, expected depth and representative evidence for each
setting, would serve better than a single undifferentiated list, and would make
adaptation principled rather than left to each program to reinvent.
Finally, equity arrives last but operates first.
Differentiation and equity and inclusion sit at the end of Domain 3, implying a
sequence: acquire knowledge, develop skill, then add inclusion. But equity
commitments operate before the lesson exists. They shape what a teacher
notices, which words and varieties are legitimized, how resources are
evaluated, whose language practices are recognized as assets, and what counts
as successful participation (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Broad wording compounds
the problem. A framework that lists equity last may invite programs to teach it
last.
5. What a process account has to
do
A complementary process account must preserve the
18 competencies rather than replace them. Three literatures supply the
components. The competence-continuum account shifts attention from what kind of
mental content a competency contains to where it operates in relation to
performance: dispositions at one end, situation-specific perception,
interpretation and decision-making in the middle, observable performance at the
other (Blömeke et al.,
2015). Research on professional vision shows that what
teachers notice and how they interpret it is itself a learnable, measurable
competence (Seidel & Stürmer, 2014). Research on teacher
learning shows that change does not flow one way from knowledge to practice:
enactment and reflection are themselves mechanisms of professional growth (Clarke
& Hollingsworth, 2002), and professional learning
is better modelled as a complex system than a linear process (Opfer
& Pedder, 2011).
Vocabulary teaching makes the functional distance
concrete. Knowing that English words have morphological, phonological,
orthographic and semantic structure can remain decontextualized. Deciding that
a particular word merits attention in a particular text is more proximal.
Diagnosing why a learner struggles, choosing a representation, differentiating
a task and responding to evidence of learning are progressively more situated.
One caution: proximity to enactment is not value, difficulty or temporal order.
Distal knowledge may be essential even when it does not itself specify an action;
proximal performance may be fluent but poorly grounded; and teachers move in
both directions. The relevant image is a recursive gradient, not a one-way
pipeline.
The internal organization of the VTC proceeded in
four moves: separating the framework’s organizing principles; examining each competency
by the instructional function it primarily serves rather than by whether its
wording says ‘understands’, ‘identifies’ or ‘develops’; positioning the competencies by proximity to
enactment using four criteria (contextual specificity, interpretive demand,
temporal proximity to action, observability of consequences); and checking the
result against PCK and competence-continuum theory. The zones are not latent
factors or developmental stages, and their boundaries are permeable.
6. A recursive continuum of vocabulary-teaching
enactment
Figure 1 presents the proposed architecture. Four
functional zones move from relatively distal resources towards situated
enactment. A cross-cutting professional and socio-cultural orientation shapes
every zone, and feedback from practice returns to earlier reasoning and
knowledge. The arrows indicate functional relations, not a compulsory sequence
for every instructional event.
Figure
1. A recursive continuum of vocabulary-teaching enactment.
Zone 1, lexical-research foundations, contains
relatively decontextualized resources for reasoning about vocabulary: the
statistical nature of language, the structures of vocabulary, and the
characteristics of vocabulary types. These make patterns available for
professional use, including frequency, dispersion, collocation, morphology,
orthography, semantic relation, register (Bauer &
Nation, 2020). Without them, teachers may misanalyse words,
rely on weak selection criteria or overlook relations that would support
learning. Calling them foundational does not mean they cause effective teaching
or must be taught first: a teacher can hold accurate lexical knowledge without
recognizing when it bears on a learner’s difficulty, and a novice can enact a strong
routine while explaining its linguistic basis poorly. The zone’s distance from action is conceptual, not
evaluative.
Zone 2, pedagogical reasoning and selection,
concerns the formation of instructional judgement: sourcing and critically
evaluating resources, understanding research-supported pedagogies and theories
of vocabulary learning and development, and identifying and teaching
high-utility instructional words. These competencies connect evidence with
purpose, which words deserve attention, what counts as a defensible rationale,
which resources can be trusted. Placing word selection beside theory is
deliberate. Selection is not a technical act performed after knowledge has been
acquired: frequency, coverage, generativity, learner knowledge and text
criticality become criteria only through a theory of what learners need and how
word knowledge develops (Beck et al., 2013; Nagy &
Townsend, 2012; Nation, 2022), and a theory acquires
instructional meaning only when it constrains choices. This zone converts
descriptive knowledge into reasons for action.
Zone 3, diagnostic and adaptive design, brings
reasoning into contact with particular words, texts and learners: accurate
analysis of word features; teaching interrelated components of word knowledge;
addressing atypical development; analyzing text
demands and aligning instruction with learner need; teaching relationships
between words; and, as a bridge to the cross-cutting orientation, designing
differentiated instruction. These competencies are more situated because the
same principle produces different decisions under different conditions. A word
may be central in one text and peripheral in another; morphological analysis
may unlock a generative family for one group and overload another. This is the
vocabulary-specific form of the situation-specific processes described by Blömeke et al. (2015) and studied as professional
vision (Seidel & Stürmer, 2014); competency sits here
because noticing persistent difficulty and working within multi-tiered systems
of support are interpretive acts before they are procedural ones (Alves et
al., 2018). The same lexical object is thus encountered
differently in Zone 1 and Zone 3, first as a structure that can be known, then
as a feature that can be made instructionally useful.
Zone 4, instructional enactment and professional
renewal, concerns the sustained organization, observation and renewal of
practice: a structured approach to vocabulary instruction, pedagogical
development through engagement with new research, cultivating interest while
assessing progress and providing feedback, and collaborating across the
curriculum. These are visible in programs of action over time rather than in
isolated choices. Enactment is broader than delivering a technique: it includes
sequencing opportunities to learn, noticing whether word knowledge changes,
adjusting feedback so that it names a next action rather than a correction (Hattie
& Timperley, 2007), coordinating across subjects and revising
practice in light of research. Professional renewal belongs here because
engagement with evidence is not complete when research has been read; it
becomes consequential when it changes routines, designs or interpretations (Clarke
& Hollingsworth, 2002).
Table 1 places all 18 competencies within this
architecture. The mapping is a claim about primary professional function, not
about exclusive membership.
Table 1. Functional mapping of all 18 VTC
competencies onto the proposed continuum.
|
Position |
Primary VTC
competencies |
Conceptual role |
|
Zone 1 Lexical-research
foundations |
1.1 Statistical nature of
language; 1.2 structures of vocabulary; 1.3 characteristics of vocabulary
types |
Provides the resources
that make principled reasoning possible, without specifying an action. |
|
Zone 2 Pedagogical
reasoning and selection |
1.4 Source and evaluate
resources; 1.5 research-supported pedagogies; 1.6 theories of learning and
development; 2.2 high-utility instructional words |
Turns evidence into
instructional reasons: what deserves attention, why, and which approach is
defensible. |
|
Zone 3 Diagnostic and
adaptive design |
2.1 Analyze word features;
2.3 teach components of word knowledge; 2.4 address atypical development; 2.5
analyze text demands and learner needs; 2.6 teach word relationships |
Interprets particular
words, texts and learners; adapts representations, sequences and supports. |
|
Zone 4 Enactment and
professional renewal |
3.1 Structured
instruction; 3.2 research-engaged development; 3.3 interest, assessment and
feedback; 3.4 cross-curricular collaboration |
Organizes, observes and
improves vocabulary teaching over time and across professional communities. |
|
Cross-cutting
orientation |
3.5 Differentiated
instruction; 3.6 equity and inclusion |
Shapes what is noticed,
selected, adapted and assessed in every zone; an ethical condition of
enactment. |
7. Sharpening the 18 competencies for use
The continuum reorganizes the competencies. The
frictions in Section 4 are competency-level as well as architectural, and a
framework used for program design needs wording precise enough to plan and
assess against. Table 2 offers a short sharpening for each entry, with its
position on the continuum. Three principles run through them. Name the boundary
with the neighboring competency, since the recurring
pairs — 1.2 with 2.1, 1.5 with 1.6,
2.3 with 2.6 — are functional
transformations rather than redundancies. And protect the competencies where
overreach is a professional risk: teachers can notice indicators of persistent
difficulty and initiate referral, but should not be positioned as diagnosing
disorders outside their expertise. The wording should carry the safeguard,
because the wording is what ends up in the rubric.
Table 2. Sharpening each VTC competency for
teaching, learning and assessment.
|
VTC |
Competency
(abbreviated) |
Zone |
How to sharpen it
for use |
|
1.1 |
Statistical nature of
language |
1 |
Define a
teacher-appropriate statistical literacy: interpreting frequency and
dispersion evidence, and explaining the limits of lists and corpus counts —
not calculating them. |
|
1.2 |
Structures of vocabulary |
1 |
Conceptual understanding
of form–meaning–use relations; reserve 2.1 for context-specific analysis.
Include multiword units and polysemy. |
|
1.3 |
Types of vocabulary |
1 |
Classifications are
purpose-dependent tools, not natural kinds. Require teachers to compare two
systems and justify one. |
|
1.4 |
Source and evaluate
resources |
2 |
Reword to ‘sources,
evaluates and adapts’. Supply a protocol covering evidence base, validity,
bias, accessibility and AI-generated materials. |
|
1.5 |
Research-supported
pedagogies |
2 |
Assess appraisal and
adaptation of instructional principles, not recall of program names. Replace
the unstable word ‘current’. |
|
1.6 |
Theories of vocabulary
learning |
2 |
Specify a small set of
theoretical functions rather than a reading list; assess use of theory in
cases. |
|
2.1 |
Accurate lexical analysis |
3 |
Accurate, pedagogically
relevant analysis. Specify sufficient depth by role and phase; recognize
dialectal and register variation. |
|
2.2 |
High-utility instructional
words |
2 → 3 |
Score selection rationale
and enactment separately. Replace ‘high utility’ with ‘instructionally
consequential for specified learners and purposes’. |
|
2.3 |
Components of word
knowledge |
3 |
Allow selective emphasis:
diagnose what is known, target what is consequential, design connected
encounters. |
|
2.4 |
Atypical vocabulary
development |
3 |
Protect boundaries:
‘recognizes indicators, responds instructionally, documents and collaborates
in referral’. Safeguard the difference/disorder distinction. |
|
2.5 |
Text demands and learner
needs |
3 |
Retain as the strongest
bridge competency. Require quantitative, qualitative and learner-specific
evidence, and what would change if that evidence differed. |
|
2.6 |
Relationships between
words |
3 |
Require accurate,
generative and relevant relations, distinguished by type and tied to an
explicit transfer goal. |
|
3.1 |
Structured approach to
instruction |
4 |
Define structural
features, not the label: outcomes, principled selection, distributed
encounters, monitoring, revision. Assess a unit’s coherence. |
|
3.2 |
Research-engaged
development |
4 |
Require individual and
organizational evidence: inquiry into practice, documented change in
reasoning or design, ethical appraisal of AI resources. |
|
3.3 |
Interest, assessment and
feedback |
4 |
Split into engagement and
assessment–feedback. Require proximal and distal evidence, and feedback tied
to a next action. |
|
3.4 |
Cross-curricular
collaboration |
4 |
Define observable
products, shared text-demand analysis, aligned goals, joint review of learner
evidence, and record opportunity to collaborate. |
|
3.5 |
Differentiated instruction |
cross-cutting (strongest in 3) |
Cross-cutting and
evidence-based. Preserve ambitious goals and participation; include
multilingual repertoires; ask whether the adaptation improved learning. |
|
3.6 |
Equity and inclusion |
cross-cutting (all zones) |
Position across all
domains with observable indicators: asset-based representation of
multilingual repertoires, teaching dominant academic forms without devaluing
other varieties, scrutiny of biased assessments. |
8. Implications for teacher education
If competence is mobilized across a continuum,
teacher education should resist a curriculum in which lexical content is
completed in one module and pedagogical application is expected to appear
later. Morphology, frequency, word knowledge and vocabulary types should be
revisited through instructional problems: selecting words from authentic texts,
diagnosing learner responses, designing explanations, comparing resources,
interpreting assessment evidence. This does not reduce disciplinary knowledge;
it gives that knowledge repeated occasions to become professionally functional,
the argument made more generally for practice-based teacher education by Ball
and Forzani (2009), Grossman et al. (2009) and Zeichner (2010). The four zones can serve
as a planning lens without becoming new silos: each substantial learning
experience should make visible how at least two zones interact, and how
socio-cultural considerations change the resulting judgement. Vocabulary
teaching suits decomposition and approximations of practice unusually well,
because its core decisions leave a documentary trail, a text, a word list, a
rationale, a lesson, some student writing.
The continuum also clarifies what different
assessment formats can and cannot show (Table 3). A knowledge test can
establish whether foundational resources are available; it cannot show whether
the teacher selects the relevant information or adapts it to a learner. A
lesson plan reveals design but not noticing during interaction; observation
reveals enactment but may obscure the reasoning behind it. Self-report is only
one single source. The assessment side would also benefit from distinctions
vocabulary research already draws between breadth and depth, receptive and
productive knowledge, and proximal and distal measures (Schmitt,
2019).
Table 3. What different assessment formats can and
cannot show.
|
Evidence source |
What it can show |
What it cannot
show |
|
Knowledge test,
viva or resource audit (Zones 1–2) |
Whether foundational
resources are available and accurate; the criteria used when evaluating
materials. |
Whether the teacher
selects relevant information, or whether the judgement survives contact with
a class. |
|
Word selection
with written rationale (Zone 2) |
The reasoning that
converts lexical evidence into an instructional decision. |
Whether the selection is
enacted coherently, or revised when it fails. |
|
Annotated lesson
plan (Zones 2–3) |
Anticipated design,
intended representations, planned differentiation. |
Noticing during
interaction — what the teacher does when the plan meets the room. |
|
Observation or
recorded micro-teaching (Zones 3–4) |
Enacted performance:
representation, sequencing, interaction, responsiveness. |
The reasoning that
produced it, and whether it was principled or habitual. |
|
Student work and
assessment interpretation (Zone 4 → return path) |
Whether instruction
changed word knowledge, and whether the teacher reads the evidence
accurately. |
Attribution to any single
competency; effects of opportunity and prior teaching. |
|
Stimulated recall
or self-assessment (across zones) |
Reasoning behind observed
decisions; priorities for professional learning. |
Protection against
retrospective rationalization; a defensible basis for high-stakes judgement. |
A defensible system is therefore programmatic:
evidence accumulates across tasks and time, high-stakes judgements are not made
from self-assessment, and domain totals are not calculated until the structure
and scoring model have been validated (Kane, 2013). Initially the framework
suits formative profiling better than certification. One integrated task can
nonetheless sample the whole continuum while still permitting analytic scoring:
give a candidate an authentic text and a real class profile, then ask them to analyze the vocabulary demands (2.5, drawing on 1.1–1.3), select instructional
words and justify the selection (2.2, drawing on 1.6), anticipate two learner
difficulties and design a representation for each (2.1, 2.3, 2.6, 3.5), teach a
recorded segment (3.1, 3.3), and interpret the resulting student evidence in
order to state one change to the original rationale (3.3, and the return path
to Zone 2). The last step is the one most assessment systems omit, and the one
the continuum says matters most.
For in-service teachers, the model favors professional learning, like which words students
fail to learn across a unit, how the same word is explained by different
colleagues, and what the lexical demands of a disciplinary text actually are.
Research and resources enter as tools for resolving these problems, and
classroom evidence supplies feedback for continued inquiry: the pattern that
distinguishes professional development which changes practice from professional
development and which does not (Kennedy, 2019). Collaboration matters
because the vocabulary demands of schooling cross subject boundaries, and
content-area teachers, language specialists and special educators notice
different aspects of the same text. Workload discipline is part of this: 18
broad competencies expand rapidly if each generates separate content and
separate assessment, whereas one rich task can address text demands, selection,
analysis, differentiation, instruction, assessment and equity provided the
scoring makes the connections visible.
For the framework itself, the analysis suggests
two layers rather than a revised single one. Layer 1 retains the 18
competencies as a content inventory under the three domains, answering ‘What resources and capabilities should be present?’ Layer 2 shows how they function in practice,
answering ‘How are they mobilized and
renewed?’ Keeping both prevents a
false choice between clarity and complexity, and makes the Möbius metaphor
operational. The reconstruction also refines Domain 3, currently the least
homogeneous: structured instruction, assessment, feedback, collaboration and research-engaged
renewal are tied to sustained enactment, whereas differentiation, equity and
inclusion operate as orientations shaping decisions throughout. Each competency
would then gain a short construct definition, boundaries, representative
evidence and proficiency descriptors.
9. Boundary conditions and limitations
The model is a conceptual proposal, not an
empirically recovered structure. The four zones are proposed because they give
a coherent account of functional proximity to enactment, not because analysis
has established four factors; other numbers may prove more useful, and
boundaries may shift across early literacy, second-language teaching and
multilingual education. The placement of individual competencies is contestable
in an instructive way: evaluating a resource is distal as a generic review and
proximal when a teacher selects material for a particular class;
differentiation is cross-cutting but most visible in adaptive design; research
engagement belongs to renewal yet changes foundational knowledge. These are not
counterexamples but a claim the model makes deliberately. Position is partly a
property of how a competency is enacted, not only of how it is worded, and that
claim could be refuted.
Nor is movement towards performance always linear
or desirable. Teachers act before they can articulate a rationale, revisit
assumptions mid-lesson, and suspend familiar practice when equity concerns
require it. Institutional conditions matter throughout: time, curriculum,
assessment policy and collegial support enable or constrain mobilization even
where individual knowledge is strong, and a model that ignores this will
misattribute organizational failure to teachers. Finally, the synthesis is
anchored in literature selected for direct relevance to the VTC’s organizing problem; its value rests on
conceptual coherence, explanatory usefulness and the questions it generates,
criteria that must be supplemented by empirical comparison with alternative
architectures.
10. A staged program of validation
No single study validates a framework. What a
framework can have is a cumulative program that progressively justifies
particular uses, professional discussion first, then program design, then
formative profiling, and only much later anything resembling certification (Kane,
2013). Table 4 sets out five stages, each depending on the
one before. Stage 1 comes first for a reason: if teachers and teacher educators
do not organize the competencies the way either architecture predicts, both
models need revision before anything is measured. Stage 5 is the test that
matters for teacher education. A comparative study, one program teaching VTC
content in domain-based modules, another organizing the same content around
connected problems of practice, would give the continuum its most consequential
test: it gains support if integrated designs improve mobilization without
weakening foundational understanding, and loses it if they do not.
Table 4. A staged program of validation.
|
Stage |
Question |
Methods |
|
1. Representation |
Do teachers, teacher
educators and observers organize the 18 competencies by the three domains, by
the four zones, or by something else? |
Card sorting; think-aloud;
expert elicitation; cognitive interviews on each competency’s wording. |
|
2. Measurement |
Can the competencies be
measured in ways that distinguish resources from mobilization? |
Instrument development
across all 18 competencies: lexical-analysis, word-selection and
justification, learner/text diagnostic, observed instruction. Confirmatory
models only once instruments exist. |
|
3. Mediation and
development |
Does lexical-research
knowledge act through reasoning and adaptive design, and do the zones develop
unevenly (Propositions 1, 2, 6)? |
Longitudinal or
experimental designs; cohort studies from entry through practicum into early
career; repeated performance tasks; tests for threshold effects. |
|
4. Recursion and
equity |
Does classroom evidence actually change selection rationales and word analysis,
and does socio-cultural responsiveness operate across zones (Propositions 3,
4)? |
Video-supported
reflection; stimulated recall; design-based professional learning; studies
spanning multilingual learners, disability and disciplinary settings. |
|
5. Consequences |
Does organizing a program
around connected problems of practice produce better mobilization than
domain-based modules? |
Comparative intervention
studies, with outcomes spanning knowledge, reasoning, adaptive design and
observed enactment; plus fairness and consequential evidence for any
assessment use. |
11. Conclusion
The VTC makes a major contribution by specifying
the knowledge, skills and professional capabilities vocabulary teaching
requires. Its three domains provide clarity, coverage and a practical basis for
program development, and its attention to professional renewal, differentiation
and equity distinguishes it from frameworks that stop at technique. Its
limitations are those of any initial conceptual framework: imported domain
categories, porous boundaries, uneven grain size, compound entries and limited
specification of evidence or progression.
Teachers do not first finish knowing, then begin
doing, and finally add professional or socio-cultural judgement. They mobilize
resources through interpretation, adaptation, action and reflection, in
situations where linguistic, pedagogical and ethical considerations are
inseparable. Sam’s week is not unusual in this
respect; it is what the work is. The recursive continuum offers a complementary
process architecture: foundations support reasoning and selection; reasoning is
fitted to learners and texts through diagnostic and adaptive design; design is
realized and renewed through enactment; socio-cultural responsiveness shapes
the whole; and feedback returns from consequences to knowledge and judgement.
The proposal is open to revision, its zones are not validated factors and its
propositions require direct tests, but its immediate value is practical. It
distinguishes possessing resources from mobilizing them, and gives teacher
educators a way to connect curriculum, assessment and professional learning
around the actual work of teaching vocabulary. A refined VTC would keep the
18-competency map, add the process architecture, make equity cross-cutting,
specify evidence and progression, and validate in stages — honoring
the framework’s own insight that vocabulary
teaching competence is not the sum of separate boxes, but the coordinated,
context-sensitive and ethically responsible mobilization of knowledge in
practice.
Declaration
of GenAI Use in the Writing Process
The authors used ChatGPT to improve language,
clarity, and readability. The authors reviewed and edited all AI-generated
content as necessary and take full responsibility for the content of the
published article.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Conflict
of Interest
The authors declare that they have no competing
interests.
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Author biodata
Mark Feng Teng, Ph.D., previously worked in
Macao Polytechnic Unviersity, and currently at English
Department, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. He was the recipient of the
2017 Best Paper Award from the Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics
(HAAL). His research portfolio mainly focuses on L2 vocabulary acquisition,
reading and writing. He was listed in the top 2 % of Scientists in the world in
the disciplinary areas of Linguistics/Applied linguistics/Education, based on
Stanford University Rankings.
E-mail:
markteng@hsu.edu.hk
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5134-8504
Wei Lun Wong, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer in Teaching English
as a Second Language at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. His research focuses on corpus
linguistics, data-driven learning, L2 vocabulary, reading and writing, language
teacher education and generative artificial intelligence in language learning.
His publications have appeared in international journals, including
International Journal of Applied Linguistics, The Asia-Pacific Education
Researcher, Learned Publishing, SAGE Open, Scientific Reports, Computers &
Education: X Reality, Educational Review and Asian-Pacific Journal of Second
and Foreign Language Education, among others. He serves as Associate Editor for
the Language Education Section of Cogent Education and Academic Editor for PLOS
ONE. He also serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of TESOL
Studies, Asian Journal of University Education, and World Journal of English
Language.
E-mail: colinw@ukm.edu.my
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4367-0157