The media, both national and local, are an important public arena for the articulation and contestation of education policy, education issues and professional identities. As well as serving as an arena for other agencies' 'claims- making', the media themselves play an active role in managing the selection and framing of public images and definitions regarding education policy, the education system, the status of teachers and the teaching profession. Drawing on emerging findings from a four-year research project, with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, on the Status of Teachers (http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/status/), this paper examines British media discourse on teachers, the status of teachers and education issues. Starting with a survey of comparable European research, the examination of media discourses is contextualised within a discussion of research models for understanding the relationship between political claims-making, media practices, media content, political decision-making and the formation of public images and public opinion. Drawing on a range of approaches and research from the traditional political science approaches of agenda-building, agenda-setting and public opinion formation to constructionist, discourse- based, and more recent adaptations of public relations and media-management approaches in political research, the paper points to the need for a dynamic and dialectic framework, rather than more traditional linear approaches, to understanding how public agendas and discourses regarding teachers and education are built, elaborated, negotiated and maintained.The paper proceeds with a presentation of emerging results from a comprehensive analysis of news media constructions of the status of teachers, the teaching profession and education issues. Focusing on the two central analytical dimensions of theme and agency, the analysis seeks to answer the questions: what are the dominant representations or discursive constructions of teachers and teacher status? And how, and by whom, are the principal definitions of teachers and teacher status contested, elaborated, negotiated and maintained in the public arena of the mass media? In other words, to begin to understand some of the dynamics of the media's role in relation to public and political definitions of teacher status and the teaching profession, we need to understand what the dominant discursive constructions of teachers and education are, and we need to understand who the key 'claims-makers' responsible for contesting, elaborating and maintaining such constructions are.Responding to concerns expressed over a number of years, in Britain and other European countries, and in a number of different forums about a decline in the status of teachers, a key focus of the study - and of this paper - is on how the media (may) contribute to public images of status in the teaching profession. The media, however, rarely use the word 'status' to refer to the 'status of teachers', but instead frame and articulate the 'status of teachers' in much more subtle ways: 'status' is articulated through the highly selective, news-value-driven, reporting on and framing of education policy, teachers and the challenges faced by teachers within their personal and professional context. The analysis points to the considerable variation and diversity of discourse across the public news media, noting particularly the marked differences between 'quality' and 'popular' media and between national and regional/local media.