Workplace conditions play a central role in teachers’ professional development as well as in their morale and career choice commitment. Research has shown the importance of space and place in the construction and negotiation of beginning teachers’ subjectivities (lisahunter, Rossi, Tinning, Flanagan, & Macdonald, 2011), and the role of micro-political literacy on new teachers’ professional development (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). This paper draws on data from a longitudinal study carried out in Portugal with new teachers as they develop as teachers in the early years of teaching and beyond. Data were collected in different moments through email conversations and semi-structured interviews. A narrative approach (Kelchtermans, 1995; Clandinin, Pushor, & Orr, 2007; Elliott, 2003) was used. In total, 14 teachers participated in the study. Data reported in this paper were collected with the same teachers in different moments during their career and analysed according to a thematic analysis. The longitudinal design permitted to look beyond the very first experiences in the job -often framed as a ‘practice shock’- but reveal the complex ways in which the macro policy context and the micropolitics at school level impacted early career teachers’ experiences. Findings reveal how the shift in the macro context marked by an economic crisis and a shift from a teacher surplus to a teacher shortage led to changes at policy level in terms of school governance, school curriculum and teacher evaluation, which eventually had important consequences for teachers’ identities as well as their operation at the classroom level. Furthermore, the (changes in) the working conditions at the meso-level of the school as organisation were also found to be of crucial importance for a thorough understanding of the induction phase in teacher’s career. The findings deepen our understanding of the essentially relational nature of teaching: the relationships with students, parents and colleagues as well as the way leadership is enacted through social interactions. More in particular the study unpacks how teachers navigate the complexity of their workplace conditions and negotiate their roles as teachers as well as their identities. The paper concludes with discussing a) the consequences for the design and enactment of induction support and professional development opportunities for teachers in their early career; b) how the findings contribute to a more refined and balanced understanding of the complex processes of turnover and teacher attrition in relation to the organisational working conditions.

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