Television As Informal Education

In considering children’s learning from educational television (particularly in the case of at-home viewing), it is important to remember that much educational television serves as an example of informal education, much like educational activities that children find in magazines, museums, or after-school programs. In contrast to formal (i.e., classroom) education, informal education takes place outside of school, involves experiences that are not part of a school curriculum, and often must compete with other activities to gain children’s attention and engagement (e.g., Katz, 2001; Tressel, 1988; Trotta, 1998).

Because educational television series are informal education experiences, their production is subject to considerations that are less critical in the classroom. Perhaps most critical is the need for the television program to be highly appealing to children. After all, if children do not enjoy the program, they simply will not turn it on.

In addition, the series’ educational approach must be designed to fit the constraints of informal education. For example, unlike classroom instruction, the educational content of a television series typically cannot depend on being presented in a particular sequence over a period of days, weeks, or months. Although there is great educational value to structuring classroom instruction to begin with simple concepts and subsequently build on previous lessons as more complex concepts are introduced, this typically is not feasible in educational television because there is no guarantee that the episodes will be broadcast in order or that children will see
every episode (e.g., Fisch & Truglio, 2001b; Lesser, 1974).

One of the consequences of this point is that, when versions of existing broadcast television programs have been created for school use, they often have had to be adapted to fit the constraints of the classroom. For example, when the mathematics series Square One TV was adapted into its school version, Square One Math Talk, material was re-edited to shorten the videos to an appropriate length for classroom use, and to organize tapes thematically by mathematical content (e.g., probability, statistics) so that it would be simpler for teachers to use the videos when they reached the relevant topic in their own lessons (Yotive, 1995).


Educational television is not intended to replace formal education in school. Rather, it is intended to supplement formal education in several ways:

• By exposing children to topics that they might not encounter otherwise (or that might only be introduced formally in later grades),
• By providing compelling experiences that coax children into spending additional time exploring concepts that they are learning about in school,
• By encouraging positive attitudes toward academic subjects (particularly among populations that are typically less likely to pursue these subjects on their own), and
• By motivating children to engage actively in learning both in and outside the classroom.

OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS
The bulk of this volume is divided into two sections. The first section reviews research that assesses the impact of educational television in a variety of subject areas. Because of its pioneering role and prominence in the literature, chapter 2 is devoted to Sesame Street, both the domestic version seen in the United States and international co-productions that were created in other countries. Chapter 3 turns to other television series aimed at preschool children (e.g., Barney & Friends, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Blue’s Clues) and their impact on school readiness. Subsequent chapters review research on the educational effectiveness of school-age programs in the areas of literacy (e.g., The Electric Company, Ghostwriter, Reading Rainbow), mathematics and problem solving (e.g., Square One TV, Cyberchase), science and technology (e.g., 3-2-1 Contact, Bill Nye the Science Guy), and civics and social studies (e.g., news programs, Schoolhouse Rock, Channel One). These reviews include significant effects on children’s academic knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Each chapter ends with a discussion of lessons learned and implications for the future production of educational television.


Having documented the impact of educational television, the second section of the book proposes theoretical models to explain how such learning occurs. Chapter 10 discusses the capacity model, which uses children’s
allocation of working memory resources to help explain how children extract and comprehend the educational content embedded in television programs. Chapter 11 explores transfer of learning from educational television (i.e., children’s application of the knowledge and/or skills acquired from educational television beyond the contexts and problems shown on the screen) and the factors that can determine whether transfer will occur. Finally, chapter 12 attempts to bridge the gap between academic and social influences of television by showing how social aspects of educational television influence learning of academic content.

The concluding chapter (chap. 13) turns to the future of educational television. At the time of this writing, new technologies are emerging to change the face of television. This chapter draws on the lessons of the past to chart out directions for maximizing the power of educational television in the future.
Read More : Television As Informal Education

What Is “Educational Television”?

Over the years, numerous terms have been used to refer to television programs that are intended to educate or benefit children: educational television, instructional television, curriculum-based programming, educational/ informational programming, infotainment, edutainment, entertainment-education, and so on. Often, the terms refer to somewhat different classes of television programming; for example, instructional television often has been used in relation to television programs produced for use in classrooms, whereas infotainment has carried the connotation of “lite” educational content for consumption on broadcast television.


Definitional issues came to the fore during the debates surrounding the passage of the Children’s Television Act of 1990 and the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) strengthening of its regulations several
years later (FCC, 1991, 1993, 1995). Because the intent of the Act was to encourage broadcasters to air more programming that would serve the needs of children—and because broadcasters worried that they would be forced to air didactic “spinach television” that no one would watch—the programming required by the Act had to be clearly defined. As one might expect, these definitions were subject to extensive debate.

One central issue concerned the breadth of the definition. Some argued for limiting the definition to programs with academic goals and excluding programming that was primarily prosocial in nature, for fear that broadcasters would simply label family sitcoms as “prosocial.” Others felt that prosocial programs hold value for children as well, so that prosocial programming, too, should “count” under the Act. In fact, both positions
proved to hold some merit. Empirical research has indeed shown that exposure to prosocial programs can result in beneficial effects on children’s attitudes and behavior in areas such as cooperation and the reduction of stereotypes.

At the same time, though, some broadcasters did respond to the Act by labeling existing—and, in some cases, violent—cartoons or teen situation comedies (e.g., Saved by the Bell, The Flintstones, G.I. Joe) as educational/informational (E/I) because they included prosocial messages (e.g., Kunkel & Canepa, 1995). In one extreme instance, a broadcaster claimed that Yogi Bear met the provisions of the Act because, “despite the fact that the program is entertaining, it nevertheless does teach certain moral and ethical values such as not to do stupid things or you will have trouble; don’t take what doesn’t belong to you or be prepared to face the music” (quoted in Kunkel, 1998, p. 45).

Apart from the definition itself, a second issue concerned the standard by which programs should be judged. Some argued that, for a television series to qualify under the Act, empirical research should demonstrate its
positive impact on children. However, broadcasters countered that it would be unfair to require them to run the risk that, after investing millions of dollars to produce an educational television series, it might not be counted if subsequent research failed to find a significant effect on its audience. Thus, they argued for using the intent behind the program as a standard instead.


In the end, the Children’s Television Act of 1990 broadly defined “educational/ informational programming” as carrying content that will “further the positive development of the child in any respect, including the child’s cognitive/intellectual or emotional/social needs” (FCC, 1991). And although the FCC subsequently strengthened the Act by requiring broadcasters to air a specified quota of 3 hours per week of E/I programming, they decided against narrowing the definition of E/I programs. Yet, contrast the definition used in the Act with, for example, the stricter definition that Condry, Scheibe, Bahrts, and Potts (1993) used in a content analysis of children’s television:

A significant portion of the program is devoted to teaching information that the children in the audience are not likely to already know (e.g., the alphabet, vocabulary, historical or scientific information, applied information
for everyday life) or demonstrating skills or crafts.

The history and policy implications of the Act have been discussed at length elsewhere, along with the impact of the Act on broadcasting in the United States (e.g., J. Bryant, J. A. Bryant, Mulliken, McCollum,&Love,
2001; Jordan, 2000; Kunkel, 1998; Kunkel & Wilcox, 2001; Schmitt, 1999; Steyer, 2002). For the purposes of this discussion, it is sufficient to note that educational television has been conceptualized and defined in many different ways.

In light of the diverse definitions that have been used in the past, it is useful to clarify the parameters of the educational television series included in this volume.With rare exception, the television series discussed
here were produced with the intent of serving specific educational objectives. Those objectives may correspond to any of a number of academic subjects (e.g., science, literacy, mathematics), or they may be prosocial in nature. The degree to which each series succeeded in meeting its educational objectives has been evaluated through empirical research with children. Typically, this research took the form of summative research, that is, substantive assessments of educational impact after a given series was produced. In some cases, relevant data are also included from formative research that was conducted during production to inform and guide the development of the final product. (For more extended discussions regarding the distinction between formative and summative research and their application to the production of educational television, see, e.g., Mielke, 1990; Palmer & Fisch, 2001.)

The focus of this volume is on television programs designed for children rather than adults, although I occasionally draw on the adult literature when useful. (For information on the impact of educational programs
aimed at adult viewers, see, e.g., Greenberg & Gantz, 1976; Singhal & Rogers, 1999; Winsten, 1994.) In addition, the bulk of the discussion concerns the effects of unaided viewing by children, rather than viewing in the context of adult-led follow-up activities.
Read More : What Is “Educational Television”?

Television In Children's Education Lives

In the time since television first became widely available, nearly half a century ago, the medium has grown to play a major role in the lives of children. Early studies of communities recently introduced to television found that, among families that had television sets, the average amount of time children spent watching television ranged between 1 hour, 36 minutes and 2 hours, 54 minutes per day—the equivalent of approximately 11 to 21 hours per week (Schramm, Lyle,&Parker, 1961). Estimates were even higher immediately after television appeared, probably due to the novelty of the medium. Maccoby (1951) found that, when television was first introduced to a community, children watched television for 3.5 hours on weekdays and 4.5 on Sundays (a total of more than 25 hours per week); after the first few months, viewing settled down to approximately 19 hours per week.

The picture has not changed considerably over the years. In the 1980s, several researchers reported average viewing time to be between 11 and 28 hours per week; although the exact figure varied across studies, all of the studies found that American children spend more time watching television than in any other activity except sleeping (Anderson, Field, Collins, Lorch, & Nathan, 1985; Huston, Watkins, & Kunkel, 1989; Huston,Wright, Rice, Kerkman, & St. Peters, 1987). In fact, despite the recent growth of new media such as computers, video games, and the Internet, television continues to be children’s medium of choice. A 1999 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that American children spent nearly 20 hours per week watching television, far more time than they spent with any other medium (Roberts, Foehr, Rideout, & Brodie, 1999). According to parent reports, even children as young as 2 to 3 years old spend more than 18 hours per week watching television (Jordan & Woodard, 2001).

Nor is this phenomenon unique to the United States. Children in Japan spend more than 17 hours per week watching television (primarily commercial television), an average that has remained stable over a period of 10 years (Kodaira, 2001). A multinational comparison of data from 23 countries found that children spent an average of 18 hours per week watching television. Although individual children varied greatly in their viewing, the mean of 18 hours was 50% higher than the time spent in any other activity (Groebel, 1999). Similarly, a second multinational study revealed that the amount of time children spent with television varied across countries (e.g., a mean of slightly over 10 hours per week in France, Switzerland, and Germany, versus more than 17 in Denmark and the U.K.), but the overall range was consistent with viewing in the United States (Livingstone, Holden, & Bovill, 1999). Indeed, after reviewing 45 studies, Larson (2001) concluded that the time spent by adolescents in the United States, Europe, and Asia was essentially identical.

Given the ubiquity of television in children’s lives, it is not surprising that researchers and laypeople alike have devoted a significant amount of attention to the effects of television on young viewers. Often, these discussions
of the effects of television on children focus solely on the negative. Some critics have argued that exposure to television—even educational television—can lead to outcomes such as reduced attention spans, lack of interest in school (because teachers do not sing and dance like characters on television), or children’s becoming passive “zombie viewers” (e.g., Healy, 1990; Mander, 1978; Medved & Medved, 1998; Postman, 1985; Winn, 1977). Concerns over television’s potential contribution to a broad range of problem behaviors (e.g., aggressive behavior, substance abuse, obesity, sexual activity, decreased school performance) led the American Academy of Pediatrics to recommend that children’s total time with television and other media should be limited to no more than 1 to 2 hours per day (i.e., 7 to 14 hours per week), and that television should be eliminated entirely for children under the age of 2 (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1997, 2001).

Yet, asWartella (1995) has observed, many of these claims have been put forth with little, if any, basis in empirical data. Instead of growing out of experiments with children, some claims have been based entirely on
content analyses of material shown in television programs or correlational research that cannot establish causal relationships. Other claims have been based on not much more than personal opinion, and have been directly
refuted by research with children. For example, observational studies of children’s viewing of television have shown that children watch television actively, not passively (e.g., Anderson, Lorch, Field,&Sanders, 1981; Lorch, Anderson, & Levin, 1979). Moreover, numerous studies have found that educational series such as Sesame Street produce long-term benefits in school rather than boredom and reduced attention spans.

This is not to say that television is completely without negative effects. Hundreds of studies have confirmed the finding that violent television programs contribute to aggressive behavior among viewers (see Wilson et al., 1997 for a review). The persuasive effects of advertising on children have also been documented (Kunkel, 2001), as has the influence of stereotyped portrayals on television in shaping children’s attitudes (Graves, 1993; Signorelli, 1993).

Nevertheless, even those negative effects that are supported by data do not present the entire picture. Often, far less attention has been devoted to the positive effects that carefully crafted, developmentally appropriate
television programs can hold. If we believe that children can learn negative lessons from television, then it stands to reason that they can learn positive lessons, too. The same medium that leads children to learn product information from a commercial should also be able to help them learn science concepts from an educational program. And the same medium that influences children to act aggressively after exposure to violent programming should also be able to influence them toward cooperative behavior after watching prosocial programming. Research indicates that all of these propositions are true.

Why, then, has the literature on educational effects received so little attention? Part of the reason lies in the fact that a great deal of the research is not easily accessible. Because the literature covers such a wide variety of issues and academic subjects, published research in this area has been scattered across numerous disparate sources, ranging from the Journal of Educational Psychology to Educational Technology Research and Development to the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. Moreover, a significant percentage of the literature has never been published in scholarly circles, appearing only in conference papers, technical reports, or research reports to producers and funders.

It is intended to serve two main purposes. The first is to make the disparate literature on the impact of educational television more accessible by gathering it into a centralized resource. To that end, the volume draws together empirical data on the impact of educational television programs (both academic and prosocial) on children’s knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behavior.

The second is to address an equally important gap in the existing research literature. Although, as we will see, numerous studies have shown that children learn from exposure to educational television, there has been very little theoretical work to explain why or how these effects occur.
Read More : Television In Children's Education Lives

International Impact Of Sesame Street

The globalization of Sesame Street began shortly after Sesame Street’s initial broadcast in the United States. Producers from Mexico, Brazil, and Germany independently approached CTW because they saw the value of Sesame Street, but wanted programs that would specifically address the educational needs of children in their own countries. To create the series the producers imagined, in partnership with CTW, they devised a flexible production plan that was subsequently used to create all international productions of Sesame Street. As in the United States, the various series were produced under the CTW Model, with indigenous producers, educational content specialists, and researchers. To date, 20 different adaptations of the series have been created in countries such as Brazil, China, Germany, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Russia, and Spain.

In working outside the United States, theWorkshop’s design is not to impose American culture or approaches, but instead, to provide a framework for a series created in-country by a local production team. Sets reflective of a given culture are created and inhabited by characters developed specifically for each adaptation, giving the local viewers a cast that participates in activities and situations that meaningfully reflect the lives of the programs’ viewers. The production in Germany, for example, features a German bear who wears sneakers; in Mexico, the studio segments take place in a colorful plaza populated by Abelardo, a bright green parrot, a grouch character called Poncho the Contrarian, and others. Fifty percent or less of the program content is material dubbed fromCTW’s international library of segments. These segments are selected by the local production team for their pertinence to a given program’s educational goals. The result is that when children view Sesame Street, they view a program that has the same essence as the domestic series, in a context that reflects local values and educational priorities of a specific country (Cole, Richman, & McCann Brown, 2001; Gettas, 1990).

This localization has led international coproductions of Sesame Street to reflect a range of educational priorities. Although the curricula contain elements in common (e.g., numeracy, literacy, perceptual skills), each has unique aspects that educators have identified as of critical importance to children in their countries. For example, the Chinese curriculum contained a section devoted to aesthetics because specialists felt it is an area
that has sometimes been deemphasized in school curricula but is important to children living in their culture. In Israel and the Palestinian territories, a primary focus was teaching children mutual respect and understanding. A critical element of the production in Russia was preparing children for life in their new open society. In this way, each series has provided educational messages on some of the broad curricular areas that are common to preschoolers around the globe, as well as educational content that more specifically addresses local children’s needs.

Thanks to this broad range of subject matter, research on the various Sesame Street coproductions has provided opportunities both to assess the impact of Sesame Street across cultures and to gauge the potential of television to convey educational content not addressed in the curriculum of the domestic Sesame Street. Like the research conducted in support of the U.S. version of Sesame Street, research on the coproductions includes both formative and summative work. Formative research has examined a wide range of issues, such as the development of studio sets (Gemark, 1993; Kirwil, 1996a; Plaza Sésamo IV Department of Research & Content, 1993) and characters (Kirwil, 1996b; Ulitsa Sezam Department of Research & Content, 1996), as well as the appeal and comprehensibility of specific segments or episodes.

One of the earliest studies of Sesame Street coproductions was also one of the most comprehensive. Researchers in Mexico conducted a controlled experimental study of children’s learning from Plaza Sésamo
(Diaz-Guerrero & Holtzman, 1974). A sample of 221 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were randomly assigned to either an experimental group that regularly viewed the program for 6 months, or a control group that viewed alternative children’s programming. Researchers evaluated children’s pre and postviewing performance on a battery of tests representing various skills in the Plaza Sésamo curriculum. Children who had regularly viewed the program performed better than their nonviewing peers on tests of general knowledge, numbers, letters, and word skills. The researchers also noted differences in performance on cognitive tests (e.g., classification, relational skills) and oral comprehension. Gains differed by age, with 4-year-olds benefitting most from watching and 3-year-olds, the least.

Years later, a study in Turkey (Sahin, 1992) noted similar effects of Susam Sokagi, the Turkish adaptation of Sesame Street. The study evaluated pre- and postbroadcast performance on a range of curricular skills among 1,166 children between the ages of three and six. Comparing same-age peers before and after exposure to the broadcast, children who watched the program performed better on a range of curricular skills (e.g., literacy, numeracy), even when factors such as maturation and mother’s education were taken into consideration.

A smaller scale study was used to evaluate Rua Sésamo, the Portugese adaptation of Sesame Street. The researcher (Brederode-Santos, 1993) devised a multicomponent study that brought together a compendium
of information including ratings data, surveys of parents and teachers, and pre–post viewing data from a small quasiexperimental study of 36 children in a Lisbon kindergarten. The study indicated that the reach of the program was extensive, with as much as 95% of the sample of the target population (3- to 7-year-olds) having some exposure to the program.

Regarding parents’ perspectives, the researcher noted that a majority of the parents considered the program educational and felt that the children were learning from it. An analysis of the study of children’s learning revealed trends similar to those noted in other summative evaluations, with the greatest gains in language and numeracy skills.

Similar gains in numeracy and literacy were also found in a study in Mexico (UNICEF, 1996). The researchers studied 3- to 6-year-olds from low-income families in Mexico City (382 children) and Oaxaca (396 children). In both cities, participants were randomly assigned to a high-exposure group who regularly viewed Plaza Sésamo in their school classrooms for a 3-month period, or a low-exposure group that watched
cartoons. Comparisons of performance on a battery of curriculum-based tests indicated findings in the area of symbolic representation (letter recognition, numeric skills) and geometric shapes. There was also some evidence of gains in the areas of ecology, nutrition, and hygiene in the Mexico City group.

The study also serves as a reminder of an aspect of general summative research design that must be accommodated by researchers. Although there was an attempt to create “experimental” and “control” groups, at the time of the study the reach of Plaza Sésamo was so great that it was not possible to know the degree of incidental exposure children had to the program. In the case of the study in Mexico, it was believed, for example, that it was likely that children in the control group had at least minimal exposure to the program outside of the school setting. To control for this difficulty, researchers used an admittedly imperfect proxy measure of exposure.

They included in their analysis a variable that looked at children’s familiarity with the Plaza Sésamo characters, reasoning that children who demonstrated familiarity with the characters were likely to have had exposure to the program.

In contrast, a study in Russia provided a unique opportunity to address this issue of exposure systematically. The program in Russia was initially broadcast in only some regions of the country. Researchers elected to evaluate the impact of the program in a geographical area beyond the broadcast reach, something that enabled the researchers to compare the performance of children who had viewed videotapes of the 65 episodes to that of children who had watched animated Russian fairy tales. Results of the study indicated that, although the most powerful predictor of children’s performance was age, viewers of Ulitsa Sezam developed some numeracy and literacy skills at a faster rate than their nonviewing peers (Ulitsa Sezam Department of Research and Content, 1998).

Around the world, the pattern of results that has emerged from summative evaluations of Sesame Street coproductions is noteworthy, not only for the consistency of effects across coproductions, but also because
the pattern is so consistent with effects that have been observed for the original version of Sesame Street in the United States. I will return to this point later.
Read More : International Impact Of Sesame Street

Sesame Street Education Impact Among Viewers In US

Research on the impact of Sesame Street on academic skills necessary for school readiness has been conducted both in the United States, using the domestic version of the series, and in other countries, using coproductions of Sesame Street created in partnership with local producers. Research on coproductions is discussed in the next section.

Summative research on the domestic version of Sesame Street has taken two forms. Several major studies in the 1970s and 1990s assessed the short- and long-term impact of sustained viewing of the series over a period of several months. Other, smaller scale research focused on immediate effects of limited exposure to one or more brief segments taken from Sesame Street. Each will be considered in turn.

Effects of Sustained Viewing
Early Research on Impact. The educational impact of Sesame Street was first documented in a pair of studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS; Ball & Bogatz, 1970; Bogatz & Ball, 1971). The first of these studies, conducted after the first season of production was completed, assessed Sesame Street’s impact on a variety of cognitive skills.

The participants were a geographically and ethnically diverse sample of nearly 1,000 children aged 3 to 5 (most of whom were considered to be from disadvantaged backgrounds). The children were either encouraged or not encouraged to watch Sesame Street (at home or at school) during a 26-week period; across the sample, exposure ranged from zero times per week to more than five. Before and after this 26-week exposure, the children were tested via an extensive battery of measures that covered several dimensions: knowledge of the alphabet and numbers, names of body parts, recognition of forms, knowledge of relational terms, and sorting and classification skills.

The results of the study indicated that exposure to Sesame Street produced the desired educational effects. Those children who watched the most showed the greatest pretest–posttest gains, and the areas that showed the strongest effects were those that had been emphasized the most in Sesame Street (e.g., letters). These effects held across age (although 3-year-olds showed the greatest gains, presumably because they knew the
least when they came to the series), sex, geographic location, socioeconomic status (SES; with low-SES children showing greater gains than middle-SES children), native language (English or Spanish), and whether
the children watched at home or in school.

The second ETS study (Bogatz&Ball, 1971) consisted of two components. One was a replication of the earlier study, using Season 2 shows that had been produced under a revised and expanded educational curriculum. This study confirmed the earlier results, finding significant gains in many of the same areas and in new areas that had been added in the second season (e.g., roles of community members, counting to 20
rather than 10).

The second component was a follow-up study that reexamined 283 of the children from the Season 1 study (Ball & Bogatz, 1970), about one half of whom had begun school in the interim. Teachers were asked to rate all of the children in their classes on several dimensions (e.g., verbal readiness, quantitative readiness, attitude toward school, relationship with peers), without knowing which ones had been Sesame Street viewers or were participating in the study. Results showed that, contrary to the claims of critics of Sesame Street, viewers were not bored, restless, or passive when they entered a formal classroom experience. Rather, frequent Sesame Street viewers were rated as better prepared for school than their non- or low-viewing classmates.

These findings were challenged by critics of Sesame Street, most notably by Thomas Cook and his colleagues (1975). They argued that the effects observed in the ETS studies did not reflect merely the effect of watching
Sesame Street; instead, these researchers felt that the effects reflected a combination of viewing and parents’ involvement in the viewing experience. In fact, Cook’s point was not without merit, as subsequent research
has shown that young children’s learning from television can be affected by parental coviewing and commentary (e.g., Reiser, Tessmer, & Phelps, 1984; Reiser,Williamson,&Suzuki, 1988; see chap. 9, this volume). Yet, parental involvement was not solely responsible for the ETS findings.

Even when Cook et al. conducted a reanalysis of the ETS data, controlling for other potentially contributing factors such as mothers’ discussing Sesame Street with their children, the ETS effects were reduced but many remained statistically significant. Such effects could not simply be explained through parental involvement; Sesame Street itself made a significant contribution.

Subsequent Studies. The results described above are echoed and extended by several more recent studies on the effects of viewing Sesame Street. A 3-year longitudinal study, conducted at the University of Kansas,
examined the impact of educational television (primarily Sesame Street) on school readiness by tracking approximately 250 low-SES children from either age 2 to age 5 or from age 4 to age 7 (Wright, Huston, Murphy, et al., 2001;Wright, Huston, Scantlin,&Kotler, 2001). The study took into account not only viewing of Sesame Street and other educational series, but viewing of all television, as well as nontelevision activities (e.g., reading, music, use of video games) and numerous contextual variables that have been found to affect academic achievement (e.g., parents’ own level of education, native language, preschool attendance). At regular intervals over the 3 years, children were tested with a broad range of measures, including standard tests such as the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and Woodcock-Johnson Letter–Word Recognition Test.

The results of the study indicated that preschool children who watched educational programs—and Sesame Street in particular—spent more time reading and engaged in educational activities. In addition, these children
performed significantly better than their peers on tests of letter–word knowledge, mathematics skills, vocabulary size, and school readiness on age-appropriate standardized achievement tests. These differences were consistent with earlier findings on the long-term impact of Sesame Street on children’s learning of vocabulary (Rice, Huston, Truglio, & Wright, 1990), and remained significant even after the effects of various mediating variables (e.g., parents’ educational level, primary language spoken at home) were removed statistically. In addition, long-term effects were found when children subsequently entered school; for example, consistent with the earlier Bogatz and Ball (1971) data, teachers more often rated Sesame Street viewers as well-adjusted to school.

A second study (Zill, 2001) was a correlational analysis of data from a national survey of the parents of approximately 10,000 children, originally collected for the U.S. Department of Education’s National Household Education Survey in 1993. This analysis found that preschoolers who viewed Sesame Street were more likely to be able to recognize letters of the alphabet and tell connected stories when pretending to read. These effects were strongest among children from low-income families, and held true even after the effects of other contributing factors (e.g., parental reading, preschool attendance, parental education) were removed statistically.

In addition, when they subsequently entered first and second grade, children who had viewed Sesame Street as preschoolers were also more likely to be reading storybooks on their own and less likely to require
remedial reading instruction. It is important to note that, because Zill’s (2001) data are correlational, they do not conclusively indicate a causal relationship between Sesame Street viewing and these various educational outcomes. Nevertheless, they are highly suggestive and consistent with data from the University of Kansas study.

Finally, the longest-ranging evidence for the impact of Sesame Street is a “recontact” study conducted at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Kansas (Anderson et al., 2001; Anderson,
Huston,Wright,&Collins, 1998; Huston, Anderson,Wright, Linebarger, &Schmitt, 2001). This study examined 570 high school students who either had or had not watched Sesame Street as preschoolers. Results indicated that preschool viewing of educational television programs such as Sesame Street was significantly related to higher grades in English, mathematics, and science in high school. For boys, the effect of watching Sesame Street 5 days per week translated into a grade point average difference of .35 (the difference, for example, between a B+ and an A-); for girls, it translated into a difference of .10.1

In addition, those teenagers who had viewed Sesame Street as preschoolers also used books more often, showed higher academic self-esteem, and placed a higher value on academic performance. These differences held true even after the students’ early language skills as preschoolers and family background variables were factored out.
Read More : Sesame Street Education Impact Among Viewers In US