This paper explores the personal, institutional and ideological factors underpinning the network orientations of primary teachers in Ireland. The ways in which psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists conceptualise network orientations has changed profoundly from a focus on help-seeking beliefs and behaviour patterns to one focusing on network orientations as complex and dynamic phenomena. Using Stanton-Salazar's (1997) network- analytic framework grounded in concepts of social capital, the paper examines how, and to what extent, network orientations empower and constrain teachers in their professional lives against a backcloth of seldom addressed and frequently neglected institutional and ideological factors. The primary data source is derived from long interviews (Spradley 1979) with selected male and female teachers in urban, suburban, and rural schools in the South of Ireland. Interview focus topics include socially acceptable ways of using language and communication, subject-area knowledge, and ways of negotiating entrée and building supportive ties in networks. From analytic induction (Manning 1991) of the data, findings indicate how teachers are empowered and constrained as a result of their network orientations, the challenges of multiple network membership, positioning within networks, migratory patterns from networks, and the ways in which networks serve as motivational contexts for individual and collective action.