Abstract The purpose of this study is to explore teachers’ negotiation process between the key ideas of laboratory work existing in the Swedish teaching tradition and of inquiry-based science teaching discussed in the international literature. The participants were 15 lower secondary teachers who joined an in-service teacher training program. Two times of group reflections were audio recorded and one focused group interview were collected as data resources. The preliminary result, based on two groups of six teachers, indicated that the negotiation process turned out very differently in different groups dependent on how the participant challenged themselves and negotiated with each other. The reflections concerning the awareness of different purposes on doing laboratory work for science teaching and learning were successful reached in one of the groups, while limited for the other one, , even though they were developing similar teaching activities during the program. The implication to inquiry-based science teaching for teacher training is presented.