Dressing the Corpse: Professional Development and the Play of Singularities

Abstract

In this paper, the author reasons that as students sometimes are positioned as being low ability, average, or high ability—a like belief of teachers' and schools' “intelligence” undergirds decisions about professionalism and learning, and sanctions substituting “some inner resource” in lieu of sustained professional learning. She argues that professional development has largely become a matter of implementing “proven” programs and products produced by external developers. In examining these manifestations, she situates development as an epic construct using Mikhail Bakhtin's (1981) delineation between epic and novel and suggesting that meaning is understood here as a transferable commodity. The author suggests that implementation of literacy programs as a substitution for professional learning undermines teachers' agency, obscures capacity to recognize anomalous situations, and diminishes thinking and learning. As a countermodel to development, she describes professional learning as rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), offers examples, and advocates for locally determined professional learning.