ABSTRACT
The broader educational theory and practice, summative research on educational television series about mathematics has assessed impact in three primary areas: children's knowledge of mathematics, their performance in mathematical problem solving, and their attitudes toward mathematics. Effects on knowledge of mathematics have been found across studies and across school-age television series. Knowledge of mathematics was also focuses of one early summative study of Square One TV. Evidence for television's ability to impart mathematics knowledge comes from research on Cyberchase, an animated adventure series about mathematics that premiered on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 2001 and is produced in partnership by Thirteen/WNET and Nelvana. Pretest, posttest comparisons showed significant differences between viewers and nonviewers in several attitudinal domains. In their analysis of data from summative study of Square One TV, Fisch and Hall found significant positive correlations among children's motivation, their ability to generate real-life applications for mathematics, and the number and variety of heuristics they used when working on problem-solving tasks.
