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All teachers are perpetually engaged in a struggle for recognition of who they are, what they are, and what they are worth. We know that this affects their professional identities, but not enough about what the effects are. This narrative inquiry explores how a struggle for recognition in a rapidly changing post-apartheid school system affected the professional identities of three South African mathematics teachers. Examined through a set of theoretical lenses consisting of Honneth's levels of recognition; Kelchtermans' components of the retrospective dimension of a professional self; and, Huttunen and Heikkinen's circles of recognition, their stories reveal an ability to cope with a lack of recognition by counterbalancing its negative effects with the positive effects of recognition sourced from experiences elsewhere. Surprisingly, their stories have more in common than their sociocultural differences seem to suggest. Keywords Recognition • Self-confidence • Self-respect • Self-esteem • Personal interpretive framework • Professional identity 17.1 Background Recognition is not a new issue in philosophical debate; yet, it is relatively new in educational research (Fleming & Finnegan, 2010) where it offers a fresh view of teachers' professional growth (Heikkinen, 2003). While social theorists remain divided in their assessment of the emancipatory potential of recognition (Schaap, 2004); there seems to be consensus amongst them on its usefulness as a theoretical tool in the ongoing philosophical debates regarding issues of reconciliation and social justice. Thus, the relative novelty of recognition theory in education is rather conspicuous; especially, since education is all about social justice, and recognition is at the heart of it. After all, "[a] teacher's work is a process of receiving and giving recognition" (Huttunen & Heikkinen, 2004a, p. 164). It would make sense, therefore, for recognition theory