An increasing proportion of Canadian teachers is employed part-time. In order to explore some of the day-to-day realities of part-time teaching and some of the politics and ideologies giving rise to those realities, this study described and compared the enactment of three types of "reduced-work" employment policies for teachers in an Alberta school district. Data were derived from semistructured interviews with a total of 30 teachers, administrators, and teacher-association representatives who were involved in implementing one or more of the three different reduced-work policies. Two-thirds of the sample were teachers (most of them women). This paper focuses on two types of part-time employment arrangements, examines the motivations for engaging in those arrangements, and discusses the informal negotiations associated with them. The two employment arrangements included: (1) one in which the amount of time was left largely to administrative discretion (arrangement A); and (2) one that allowed full-time continuing teachers to negotiate a part-time assignment for a defined period of time (arrangement B). Many of the female teachers chose part-time teaching in order to create personal space in which they could fulfill family and domestic responsibilities. Teachers in general also chose part-time employment in order to make career transitions and to create professional space. Both teachers and administrators frequently expressed concerns about students and program needs as the deciding factor in negotiations at various levels. However, they defined these needs differently. Teachers repeatedly pointed to the importance of their supervising administrators' attitudes in determining whether or not any negotiation would occur. In addition, gender played a role in teachers' motivations and the negotiation process. A key distinction between the two part-time work arrangements was the degree of negotiability. Women who wanted to work part-time because of family responsibilities had very different options. The contrast underscores the career penalty that women pay for taking on family responsibilities. (Contains 38 references.) (LMI)