Meaning 'has territory … and contested boundaries' (Stronach & Maclure, 1997, p.93), which can be created, lost, and recreated. Drawing on this notion of meaning, I undertake three readings to explore the meaning of professional learning in police education, with reference to research from my doctoral thesis. I grapple with and negotiate boundaries within each reading and across the three readings. The first reading constructs the current 'paradigm shift'. In the second reading I challenge and deconstruct my first reading, revealing artifice, ignorance, and nostalgia as contributing to the metaphysics of presence. The third reading unfreezes and remobilises meaning through the interdependent notion of 'certain uncertainty'. These concepts 'lean' on each other so that meaning is made between rather than within the words.