This paper aims at promoting a discussion of the rhizome versus tree metaphor as presented by Deleuze and Guattari (1995; 2009), relating such metaphor to the field of foreign language teacher education. In order to do so, we analyse a task presented to the participants of an in-service EFL teacher education course: the task required the teachers to represent their professional development by drawing a tree that would signify the different stages of such development. Our interpretive analysis examines not only the drawings produced by the teachers, but also the task itself in their relation to the rhizome and tree metaphor. Although the drawings showed obvious traces of the tree metaphor, if only because the task itself required that, we could also find references to the rhizome metaphor, what allowed us to conclude that the rhizome perspective finds its way even within academic disciplinary rigidity, thus destabilizing and transforming identity processes in professional development.
teacher education; paradigm; rhizome; professional development
