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This paper reports on an investigation into the representation of teachers in newspapers in five countries. An innovative methodology was used to develop a method of inquiry that supports a deeper understanding of media representations of teachers which can also be used by other researchers in comparative education. The paper explores relevant literature on teachers' work and media studies, and describes the decisions made about the selection of newspapers from the five countries and the analytical framework. Central to the project was the development of an analytic framework which we applied to our analysis of the media data collected from the five countries. The process revealed the construction of four categories of teacher identity: the caring practitioner; the transparent (un)professional; the moral and social role model; and the transformative intellectual. The aim was not to generalise categories but to offer them as they were found in newspapers during this time frame. The data analysis demonstrates the applicability of the innovative methodology while the project also contributes to locally translated understandings of teacher representations. The paper concludes with a reflection on the effectiveness of the methodology for comparative research.