Session Information
23 SES 06 A, Mediatization in New Regimes of Education Governance
Paper Session
Contribution
The role of the media on international education policy has been recognised for some time now (Anderson, 2007); not least in terms of the often powerful impact it exerts not only on education policy but on public service policy more generally (Hall, 1997; Wallace, 1994; Wallace, 1996). Education inspection is now employed by a number of countries both within and outside of Europe, to govern complex education systems (Ozga, Baxter, Clarke, Grek, & Lawn, 2013) In England in common with other OECD countries (see Rönnberg et al, 2012), school inspection is the focus of a great deal of media attention, particularly since the inception of the current inspectorate, Ofsted, in 1992. Since The Conservative /Liberal coalition took power in 2010, the media has increasingly been used to criticise the extent to which the inspectorate is being used to fulfil the government’s education agenda; raising questions about the extent to which its judgements can be said to be impartial (Baxter, Rönnberg, & Ozga, forthcoming). This paper draws on media discourse theory (Negrine, 2013) to employ a case study approach to examine the ways in which Ofsted is used to frame debate on The Academies project (Parliament, 2010) Sampling from 3 national newspapers: The Times, The Guardian and The Telegraph the study analyses 160 articles on inspection which make indirect and direct reference to the act. Using a framework for media analysis , it explores how media coverage of inspection within the period 2009 to 2014 is framed in terms of the act (Baxter, Ozga, & Rönnberg, Forthcoming ) .The research questions examine: how the media shape their coverage in order to appeal to the public; what news values are employed in order to colour and condition stories in ways that make them acceptable and persuasive to the public; and finally : how news stories are cognitively framed in order to create links between education policy and public understandings. The paper concludes that in linking inspection to this policy, the media exert considerable influence upon the ways in which this policy is understood and received by the public.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson, G. L. (2007). Media's impact on educational policies and practices: Political spectacle and social control. Peabody Journal of Education, 82(1), 103-120. Baxter, J., Rönnberg, L., & Ozga, J. (forthcoming). Inspection in the Media. In S. Grek & J. Lindengren (Eds.), Governing by Inspection: Embodied Regulation. London: Symposium Books Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (Vol. 2): SAGE Publications Limited. Ozga, J., Baxter, J., Clarke, J., Grek, S., & Lawn, M. (2013). The Politics of Educational Change: Governance and School Inspection in England and Scotland Swiss Journal of Sociology, 39(2), 37-55. Negrine, R. (2013). Politics and the mass media in Britain: Routledge. Parliament. (2010). The Academies Act 2010. London: HMSO Retrieved from http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/pdfs/ukpga_20100032_en.pdf. Rönnberg, L., Lindgren, J., & Segerholm, C. (2012). In the public eye: Swedish school inspection and local newspapers: exploring the audit–media relationship. Journal of Education Policy, 28(2), 178-197. Wallace, M. (1994). The contribution of the mass media to the education policy process. International Journal of Educational reform, 4(2), 124-130. Wallace, M. (1996). Guided by an Unseen Hand: The Mass Media and Education Policy. In K. Watson, S. Modgil & C. Modgil (Eds.), Educational dilemmas:Debate and Diversity: Vol.3.Power and Responsibility in Education (Vol. 3, pp. 147). London: Cassell.
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