This paper captures the experience of implementing an educational reform strategy. The development of Deakin University’s Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) (GDAL) was understood by its instigators as a platform for reform. The GDAL would respond to the challenge being put before education and training providers in late modern times: to prepare young people to create and engage with a learning society through their capacity for lifelong learning. These teacher education students would, ideally, bring skills and knowledge already gained in a professional career. While they would gain teacher registration they were better conceptualised as professional educators for an emerging post compulsory education, training and employment sector in the Australian state of Victoria: it was expected that graduates would not only teach in schools but would also move readily within the network of learning spaces that young people increasingly experience in their formal education. In the process, they would be a force for change, seeding reform within secondary schools. As a ‘teacher’ these graduates would have the credibility to challenge the entrenched practices of other teachers. It is the story of ‘what happened’ as a consequence of this specific aim that this paper concerns itself with.