Children’s Learning from Television

This article, which was published in TelevIZIon, proposes that despite the extent to which discussions about television studies focus on negative impacts, the effectiveness of educational programmes demonstrate that children learn academic and prosocial content from specifically designed formats, such as that of the Sesame Workshop. This article explains that evaluations of various national versions of Sesame Street have found a positive impact on child viewers, particularly increasing reading and mathematics abilities. According to the article, along with encouraging early learning patterns, numerous studies have found that viewing prosocial television programmes produces significant positive changes in children's social behaviour.

The article states that not all educational programming can be considered effective, and points to a number of features identified by research that producers can build into new productions to make them as educationally powerful as possible.

• Engaging children via the use of appealing elements such as humour (with the caveat that children find different kinds of humour
  funny at different ages), mysteries, and games, among others;
• Choosing age-appropriate topics (for both stories and educational content) that are inherently interesting
  to children and relevant to their lives;
• Presenting content via age-appropriate language and at levels of difficulty that are tailored to children's knowledge and developmental level;
• Handling educational content in ways that are clear, direct, and explicit.
• Keeping the educational content on the plotline - that is, making the educational content central
  rather than tangential to the narrative plotline (e.g., using a scientific principle to uncover the crucial
  clue that solves a mystery).
• Focussing an individual episode or segment tightly on conveying a small number of ideas;
• Reinforcing concepts by repeating them over the course of an episode or segment.
• Drawing explicit connections among conceptually related segments, to encourage children to see
  how similar concepts can be applied to different problems or situations.
• Using engaging or action-filled visuals rather than static visuals or 'talking heads.'
• Including characters whom viewers see as competent and intelligent, and with whom they can
  identify.
• Encouraging children to actively engage in the educational content themselves through viewer participation
• Motivating children to carry their learning forward via activities that extend the experience after viewing
  (e.g, by trying out hands-on experiments or activities they've seen on-screen, or through online
  games or resources that provide
  further opportunities for learning).

The author concludes that research has shown that
television is neither inherently good or bad for children. Rather, the effects of a television programme depend on its content. He proposes that perhaps the most important impact of such research lies in its ability to inform the production of new prgramming. By identifying what works, the approaches and production
techniques that contribute to the effectiveness of existing programming, research can help producers
build on the most effective techniques as they create new material. Research can bring the voice
of children into the production process, so that material can be tailored directly to the needs, interests, and abilities of the intended audience.