ABSTRACT
Research in numerous countries has shown that children spend tremendous amounts of time using media – often more than in any activity other than sleeping (e.g., Groebel, 1999). Despite the rapidly growing reach of interactive media, survey data from the United States indicate that children continue to use television far more than any other medium (Rideout et al., 2010). From the standpoint of harmful effects of media, such as televised violence, these statistics may appear daunting. However, for educational television, they represent a vast opportunity. Just as violent media content can produce negative effects, educational media content can – and does – produce significant positive effects. This chapter examines educational television as a tool for informal education (i.e., substantive
educational content delivered primarily outside the classroom). It reviews key studies on the impact of such media, theoretical approaches to explain children’s comprehension and learning, and the added benefits that can arise from combined use of multiple educational media platforms.
Decades of research have demonstrated clearly that both preschool and school-age children learn from well-produced educational television series. A sizable research literature has documented effects on knowledge, skills, and attitudes in various academic subject areas, such as literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, and others (e.g., Fisch, 2004; Kirkorian and Anderson, 2011). Programs designed to contribute to children’s socioemotional development also have been found to promote prosocial behavior among young viewers, but that research is beyond the scope of this chapter. (See Mares and Woodard, 2001.) Perhaps the most prominent – and certainly the most extensively researched – example of an
educationally effective television series is Sesame Street. The earliest indications of Sesame Street’s educative power emerged in a pair of experimental/control, pretest/posttest studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) after its first two seasons of production (Ball and Bogatz, 1970; Bogatz and Ball, 1971). Each study found that, among 3-to 5-year-olds, heavier viewers of Sesame Street showed significantly greater pretest-posttest gains on an assortment of academic skills related to the alphabet, numbers, body parts, shapes, relational terms, and sorting and classification. The areas that showed the greatest effects were the ones that had been emphasized the most in Sesame Street (e.g., letters). These effects held across age, 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. 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 merely reflect 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 et al., 1984). Yet, parental involvement was not solely responsible for the ETS findings. Even when Cook et al. conducted a re-analysis of the ETS data, controlling for other potentially contributing factors such as mothers discussing Sesame Street with their child, 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.
