Professional development is frequently undertaken as an activity to be done to teachers rather than in collaboration with them; designed to make teachers more effective, with the assumption that they are currently deficient; communicates ideas with an air of expertise and a messianic quality; and assumes universally effective teaching practice that is readily transferable and teacher-proof. This paper examines the effects of an alternatively constructed professional development community through the phenomenological perspective of participants. It advances a series of arguments toward larger purposes for professional development: (1) typical professional development strategies have taken on the quality of sanctified tradition in schools, without meaningfully incorporating existing scholarship or thoughtful reflection upon past practice; (2) professional development that addresses four critical knowledge bases (content, pedagogy, pedagogical-content, and self knowledge) over an extended period of time can serve as a meaningful alternative to the one-shot workshop traditionally sanctified; and (3) such an approach allows teachers to derive individualized meanings and renewed direction for their professional work, and with that, an expanding sense of self. (Contains 2 tables and 39 references.) (BT)