Abstract

The social status of teaching profession has rapidly plummeted in the Turkish society. This study discusses the societal aspect of social status and aims to critically analyse the representations of mainstream media about Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge teachers in Turkey as one of the societal reflections of teachers’ social statues. Although the dimensions of media effect on societal perceptions are not fully located, an indirect effect cannot be ignored. The study’s methodology, T. A. van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis is recruited for its comprehensive interpretation opportunities alongside with the thematic analysis, which is recruited to categorise the themes due to the ten-year duration chosen to analyse the news on the media. The examined examples of news are categorised into three themes as positive individual representations, negative individual representations and professional representations. Reflections of reactive news, which is a sub-category for individual negative representations, are found to be the section where the ideological stances/worldviews mostly are detected. Teachers’ educational actions/expressions within the classroom or actions/expressions outside school are determined to be included in the news in a way to create public discussion and moral panic. The hidden intentions and purposes behind these choices are open to discussion. The study recruits thematic analysis and Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis for analysis purposes. It is found that the majority of news is negative examples and represented with the striking headlines. Within the ten years duration explored, a transformation has been identified in both the cases, which are the sources of the news and how they are presented in the newspapers. As a conclusion, it is argued that the Turkish media should adopt a more positive and realistic attitude towards reflecting teachers’ social representation.