This paper draws upon Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field to better understand and appreciate the conditions which encouraged the productive professional development (PD) practices of one very capable teacher working in a secondary school in the British Midlands. Rather than celebrating this teacher's practices and perspective as evidence of the capacity of the heroic individual to overcome sometimes adverse circumstances, this paper reveals how the experiences of this teacher can be understood as an instance of the socially situated self, engaged by and engaging in an alternative politics to that associated with more managerial conceptions of teacher learning. This research calls for a cautious approach to those renderings of educational practice which construe the creative potential of the habitus, without sufficient regard for the actual conditions which contribute towards this creativity. In this way, this paper is presented not as an example of how one teacher overcame significant barriers to substantive learning practices--as a morality tale for other, individual educators to emulate--but as a provocation to suggest how some teachers' access to professional/community resources helps them sustain a clear focus on substantive learning.