Social representations of teachership based on cover images of Finnish teacher magazine: A visual rhetoric approach

Jari Martikainen

doi:10.5964/jspp.v7i2.1045

Abstract

Media plays an important role in the formation of social representations. This study examines the cover images of Finnish Teacher Magazine published by the Trade Union of Education as means of communicating social representations of teachership among its readership consisting of teachers and student teachers. In order to critically discuss the structure of the cover images and their implications in terms of teachers’ professional identity, the study applies a visual rhetoric approach to the study of visually mediated social representations. The data consist of 138 cover images of Teacher Magazine between the years 2013 and 2017. The analysis of visual rhetoric was conducted using content analysis and semiotic analysis that provided means of examining both the visual form of the cover images and meanings communicated through them. Even though this study detects a variety of social representations of teachership, it also identifies a highly homogeneous type of teacher throughout the imagery, which is understood to present the members of the Trade Union with an ideal type of their profession. Consequently, cover images of Teacher Magazine appear to be vehicles of inclusion and exclusion, strengthening certain social representations of teachership and marginalizing others.

Highlights

Media plays an important role in the formation of social representations
(social) semiotic analysis is used for making sense of the findings provided by content analysis and interpreting them within the matrix of socially constructed meanings (Jewitt & Oyama, 2004; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006)
This research shows that cover images of Teacher Magazine function, either consciously or unconsciously, as mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, legitimizing and marginalizing certain kinds of teachership

Summary

Introduction

This study examines the cover images of Finnish Teacher Magazine published by the Trade Union of Education as means of communicating social representations of teachership among its readership consisting of teachers and student teachers. Cover images of Teacher Magazine appear to be vehicles of inclusion and exclusion, strengthening certain social representations of teachership and marginalizing others. Similar outcomes can be found in research on teacher representations in popular media, as conducted in Finland In their studies on teacher representations in Finnish films, Keskiväli (2012) and Nygren (2007), for instance, recognized a traditional gender-based divide between female and male teachers in terms of both teachership characteristics and physical appearance. One could hypothesize that the representations of teachers in its cover images may be less stereotypical

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