Framed: A Multimodal Analysis of the Atlanta Public Schools' "Cheating Scandal"

• In Event: Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Division L Section 5 Poster Session

Abstract

Media discourse often presents a narrative about education that blames educational failures on individuals such as teachers but neglects to look at systemic societal problems as a source or solution. The purpose of this critical multimodal analysis is to investigate the way in which teachers are represented in the media visually and verbally in three different online news reports of The Atlanta Public Schools’ “Cheating Scandal”. Data analysis revealed how episodic framing (Iyengar, 1991) of the cheating events as crimes tapped into the strict father “family values” frame (Lakoff, 2004) which focused on specific events and shifted responsibility to individuals while occluding the historical and societal connections to the teachers’ actions and the damaging effects of high-stakes testing.

Authors

• Theresa Catalano, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Lauren Gatti, University of Nebraska - Lincoln