An Analysis of Newspaper Depictions of Schooling: a Participatory Study for the Development of a Teacher Education Curriculum

Many researchers argue that the news media play a significant role in the education policy arena, influencing the way in which issues are prioritized and understood. This article draws on a content analysis of the South African English news media articles over 21 months (October 2018–June 2020) to discern themes that were prioritized and given prominence and to explore the way in which these themes might present additional insights for framing the curriculum for initial teacher education programmes. We engaged with articles about basic education that were on the Government Communications and Information System site during this period and analysed those that we considered significant for the context or situational components in teacher education. We selected a final subset of 360 news articles that related to contextual aspects in schooling and we analysed the content of these articles. The analysis is regarded as being participatory in the sense that we engaged with the voices of civil society articulated via the mass media. Our engagement with the media was considered action oriented for purposes of informing curriculum design, with the media being a significant realm of social life through which public opinion can both be formed and, through the participation of citizens, used as a vehicle to have an impact on the political expressions by citizens who have information they would like to share. In this sense, the public and advocacy organisations can use the media as a watchdog to protect public interests against malpractice and to create public awareness about issues of societal importance.