This study is located in the time period of 198 to 1987, a time of change and disruption in teaching, and focuses upon men teachers' perceptions of their past and present career. It suggests that reduced promotion opportunities have led teachers to a preoccupation with strategic presentations of self for the advancement of their professional career, and examines the detail of this through the utterances of teacher-respondents in the course of tape-recorded interviews with the researcher. Attention is given to respondents' accounts of factors which, in terms of achieved rank, they perceive to have influenced career both favourably and unfavourably. The study examines teachers' understandings of the opportunities, in various areas of their work, where effective self-presentations may be made, but also shows the importance of the promotion interview as the crucial 'rite of passage' which transports the teacher to higher levels of rank. The data consist of the accounts which respondents have provided; these have been tape-recorded, and selected passages are presented verbatim and analysed. Thirty-one respondents have been involved in the production of the data, some of these providing several interviews each, and developing the role of 'key respondent'. The methodology of the study is presented in some detail . with particular attention being given to methods of conversation-type interviewing and the influence upon this of factors within the setting. In its conclusion the study attempts to draw attention to some under-examined areas of teacher research, and particularly to the-need for additional information on the perceptions of selection-panel members - and other 'gatekeepers' - and of the role of the 'sponsor' in the promotion of teachers at various bureaucratic levels.