Embracing Complexity: Findings from a Comparative Analysis of Representations of Teachers in the British Press and Research Literature

This paper follows an empirical study of how teachers were represented in British newspapers during the 1990s. Its purpose is to describe some of the findings arising from a comparison of the data and representations of teachers in educational research literature. The topic of teacher representation was a matter of personal interest to the researcher but an extensive review of educational literature revealed it also to have potential theoretical value. In the study representations of teachers in the literature were described conceptually according to the position of their characteristics within two continua: one relating to commonality and contradiction, the other to continuity and change. These continua were applied to data collected from a newspaper sample from the 1990s. Using illustrations from the sample this paper considers some of the insights this application afforded. This is followed by a discussion of the main similarities and differences between representations of teachers in the press and literature. The comparative analysis revealed ways for research to develop a more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding of how the teacher is represented in different cultural contexts, mediums and timeframes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main implications for research on the representation of teachers and it makes recommendations for further research.