This study investigates what teachers learn from a graduate-level course that prepares them to pursue an advanced form of professional teaching certification based on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). The study draws from Habermas's (1972, 1974) three knowledge constitutive interests--the technical, the practical, and the emancipatory--to interpret the effect of the course on students' professional development and preparedness for the NBPTS assessment. The assertions reveal that although most students emerged fully prepared to take the NBPTS, they simultaneously resisted a hierarchical power structure that denied them control over the conditions of the NBPTS assessment.