Many researchers argue that the news media play a significant role in the education policy arena, influencing the way in which issues are prioritized and understood. This article draws on a content analysis of the South African English news media articles over 21 months (October 2018–June 2020) to discern themes that were prioritized and given prominence and to explore the way in which these themes might present additional insights for framing the curriculum for initial teacher education programmes. We engaged with articles about basic education that were on the Government Communications and Information System site during this period and analysed those that we considered significant for the context or situational components in teacher education. We selected a final subset of 360 news articles that related to contextual aspects in schooling and we analysed the content of these articles. The analysis is regarded as being participatory in the sense that we engaged with the voices of civil society articulated via the mass media. Our engagement with the media was considered action oriented for purposes of informing curriculum design, with the media being a significant realm of social life through which public opinion can both be formed and, through the participation of citizens, used as a vehicle to have an impact on the political expressions by citizens who have information they would like to share. In this sense, the public and advocacy organisations can use the media as a watchdog to protect public interests against malpractice and to create public awareness about issues of societal importance.

许多研究人员认为，新闻媒体在教育政策领域发挥着重要作用，影响了问题被优先考虑和理解的方式。本文对 21 个月（2018 年 10 月至 2020 年 6 月）南非英语新闻媒体文章的内容分析进行了分析，以识别被优先考虑和突出的主题，并探索这些主题可能为构建初级教师教育课程的课程。我们研究了这一时期政府通信和信息系统网站上有关基础教育的文章，并分析了那些我们认为对教师教育的背景或情境成分具有重要意义的文章。我们选择了与学校教育背景相关的 360 篇新闻文章的最终子集，并分析了这些文章的内容。分析被认为是参与性的，因为我们参与了通过大众媒体表达的公民社会的声音。我们与媒体的接触被认为是以行动为导向的，目的是为课程设计提供信息，媒体是社会生活的一个重要领域，通过它可以形成舆论，并通过公民的参与，将其用作产生影响的工具公民有他们想分享的信息的政治表达。在这个意义上说，