Staying Above the Fray: Framing and Conflict in the Coverage of Education Policy Debates

Abstract

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Education Coverage in Television News: A Typology and Analysis of 35 Years of Topics

“…Much news coverage is dominated by a "discourse of derision" (Parker, 2011;Wallace, 1993) that portrays schools in a negative light and blames them for the effects of broader social and structural inequities (Stack, 2006;Ulmer, 2016). Teachers and their unions are a particular target of derision (Keogh & Garrick, 2011;Tamir & Davidson, 2011;Thomas, 2011;Ulmer, 2016), with teachers framed as caring but ineffective (J. L. Cohen, 2010) and unions as obstructing needed reforms (Goldstein, 2011). Together, these and other discourses and frames advance an approach to school reform that emphasizes privatization, choice, and individual teacher accountability (Feuerstein, 2014;Hlavacik, 2016;Ungerleider, 2006;Wubbena, Ford, & Porfilio, 2016) while ignoring larger economic and social forces undermining school success (Goldstein & Beutel, 2009) as well as systemic challenges faced by teachers, such as heavy workloads (Thomas, 2006).…”

Researchers as knowledge brokers: A step toward research-informed policy? Lessons from the Israeli case

“…In addition, the media may reflect the struggle for educational policy resulting from political and/or ideological disputes between social agents with differing views and values in various social settings, in the interactions among researchers, policymakers, educational practitioners, and the public. The media frames the issues it reports in a way that makes the public attribute responsibility to interested parties and specific institutions and assign blame to the problems that arise in the field of education on individuals in society (Cook, 2006;Tamir & Davidson, 2011). The focus on individuals in society reinforces the isolation of policymakers from the public, and thus they become more dominant.…”

Re-framing teacher evaluation discourse in the media: an analysis and narrative-based proposal

“…More specifically, I discuss how teachers might de/reterritorialize their Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 7 sphere of influence through counter-narratives. Rather than remain within frames of conflict (Tamir & Davidson, 2011), therefore, teachers themselves might utilize established, online, and social forms of media to describe their craft, their practice, and their contributions. Given that education represents a key site within education debates (Cohen, 2010), I propose that educators contest this key site by assembling a multiplicity of petit and counter-narratives.…”

“…Hence, the need for teachers to engage as public members of their profession is underscored. As Tamir and Davidson (2011) observe: "it remains to be seen whether actors with less symbolic capital, like teacher educators, can reshape educational policy by using new media tools to change framing and conflict patterns in their favor" (p. 257). By more widely adopting public (media) engagement as part of professional identity, teachers may then begin to de/reterritorialize existing discourses of professional inadequacy and metanarratives of crisis.…”