In the formative years of their teaching careers, newly qualified teachers navigate uncharted terrains. Often, this evokes in them feelings of excitement with the anticipation to positively impact the lives of their learners, but this euphoria soon becomes a despair due to unfavourable working conditions and relations with their senior colleagues. This qualitative study interrogates the nature of positioning as experienced by four public secondary school newly qualified teachers (NQTs) in South Africa. Specifically, how their acceptance and/or rejection of their assigned rights and duties affect their positioning in their new working environments.

Thus, this paper asks three questions to guide the study:
1) how do NQTs position themselves in the school?
2) how are NQTs positioned in the school by other colleagues?
3) what are the implications of NQTs’ positioning in the school on their sense of self as professionals?

To answer these questions, the study leaned on interpretivism as a research paradigm, and it used phenomenology as the research design. Purposive sampling was used to choose the participants in two selected public secondary schools in the Free State province. Data was collected through semi-structured individual interviews, and it was analysed through thematic analysis strategy. Using Positioning theory as a lens, we identified nuances in the way NQTs were positioned by colleagues and how they positioned themselves within the moral fields. In this study, the NQTs’ storylines reveal that they feel they have a duty to offer high quality education to their learners but are constrained by poor working conditions. Although they felt they had rights to be supported and heard, their assigned positions deprived them of these rights. We argue, therefore, that NQTs need to be recognised as important role players in the South African education ecosystem by seriously considering their professional needs and including them in decision-making processes in the matters that concern them.

Keywords: Newly qualified teachers, moral orders, rights and duties, positioning, storylines.