This research seeks to enquire into the processes and discourses through which the Scottish Primary teacher is constructed and the ways in which the individual teacher constructs her social self and negotiates her identities within a feminised profession, with particular reference to her gendered and her national identities. This paper explores contested understandings of 'feminisation' (Steedman, 1985) (Tamboukou, 2000), of 'feminism' (Callaghan et al, 1999) (Beasley, 1999) and of 'Scottishness' (McCrone, 1998) (Abrams et al, 2006) in the lived experience of participants. At a time when upheavals in the management and delivery of public services across Europe and beyond is resulting in a 'restructuring' of teaching as work (Ball, 2006), this study offers an intimate exploration of how women teachers in Scotland make sense of educational change.Research questionsoBy what processes do women primary teachers in Scotland understand and negotiate their own identities? oWhat role is played in that negotiation by gender, feminism, feminisation and nationhood? oHow do Scottish primary teachers as women adopt, maintain or resist cultural representations of teachers and of Scottish womanhood? The core method of data collection used is Life History method - using biographical data drawn from lengthy conversational interviews with 6 women as a basis for qualitative enquiry. Given that it is often by way of getting on with our lives that we reproduce the social structures, and consequently the social inequalities, of which we are a part, life-history methodology allows access to the every-day minutiae of teachers' lives in a way which may be problematic with other forms of enquiry. This narrative method investigates how the self-consciousness of teachers is utilised to produce their self-formation (Erben, 1996). It combines the personal and the professional in keeping with the concept of multiple realities and multiple identities. The data-gathering and analysis for this research is on-going and therefore it is not yet possible to offer firm conclusions. However, the emerging narratives encapsulate some of the ways in which the lived experience of primary teaching in Scotland is shaped by power relations based on gender, and on gendered constructs of national identity. Further, the accounts portray ways in which teachers as women strive to construct coherent identities despite on-going dissonances between what they believe and value, and what their work entails in practice.Abrams, L., Gordon, E., Simonton, D. & Janes Yeo, E. (Eds) (2006) Gender in Scottish History since 1700 Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press Ball, s. (2006) Education Policy and Social class Abingdon. Routledge Beasley, C. (1999) What is Feminism? London, Sage Publications Callaghan, M., Cranmer, C., Rowan, M., Siann, G. & Wilson, F. (1999) 'Feminism in Scotland: self-identification and stereotypes' Gender & Education 11(2) 161-177 Erben M. (1996) 'The purposes and processes of biographical method' in D Scott & R Usher (Eds) Understanding educational research London, Routledge McCrone, D. (1998) The Sociology of Nationalism London, Routledge Steedman, C. (1985) 'Prisonhouses' Feminist Review 20, 7-21 Tamboukou, M. (2000) 'The paradox of being a woman teacher' Gender & Education 12(4) 463-478 Author's PublicationsMacDonald, A. (2001) 'Power, Professionalism and the post-Mc Crone Agreement: observing the response of Scottish teachers' Education in the North 9 34-43 MacDonald, A. (2004) "Collegiate or Compliant? Primary teachers in post-McCrone Scotland' British Educational Research Journal 30(3) 413-433 MacDonald, A. (in press) 'Becoming Chartered Teachers: issues of Status, Power and Identity' Scottish Affairs