ABSTRACT
This chapter continues examining the scaffolding from which differences are constructed. The scaffolding of the different discourses of mission, psychology, and the alchemy of school subjects involves a movement from ethical discourses about the mission of schooling to a pastoral power concerned with governing the "soul" of the urban/rural child. Teach For America symbolically articulated a societal "feeling" about the needs and deficiencies of urban and rural schooling. The visioning of the teacher's mission occurred through talking about professional commitments. During the Summer Institute, a discourse about the professional teacher shifted focus from the social issues embodied in schooling to corps members' personal motivation, perseverance, and the instrumental tasks of managing classrooms. A corps member understood teaching as reversing children's dysfunctional behavior. Theories of child development or learning are the technologies that assemble and connect different theories and social practices into an assemblage that becomes the criteria for the reasonableness and usefulness in pedagogy.
