Educational Television: What We Know from 30 Years of Sesame Street Research

Devised in 1968 as a program designed to enhance school readiness in low-income and minority children, Sesame Street was the first television series to attempt to teach an educational curriculum to its viewers. From the start, Sesame Street has been a collaborative effort between production specialists, content advisors and educational researchers who based the series upon formative (informative research upon which production designs are based) and summative (evaluative research indicating the program's effectiveness in particular outcome measures) research. Based upon thirty-years of research, we know that Sesame Street has been successful in enhancing school readiness in young children, and many of these initial advantages have been shown to persist into adolescence as well.

School-Readiness : In studies completed after Sesame Street's first two televised years, viewers experienced positive outcomes in the areas of alphabet and number knowledge, body part naming, form recognition, relational term understanding, and sorting and classification abilities. The children who watched the most benefited the most, and, as compared to non-viewers, viewers were given higher ratings of school-readiness by their teachers. Lastly, viewers were not bored or passive in the classroom despite having been exposed to the Sesame Street experience. (Bogatz & Ball, 1971)

Long-term Benefits : In a longitudinal study examining the long-term impact of preschool-aged viewing of Sesame Street, it was found that exposure to the program in the preschool years was significantly associated with secondary school achievement. Frequent viewers earned better grades in English, Math and Science and had higher grade point averages than non-viewers. Furthermore, viewers demonstrated more frequent use of books, higher academic self-esteem and an increased appreciation for the value of educational achievement. (Anderson, Huston, Wright, & Collins, 1998)

Social Impact : Sesame Street has also been evaluated with regard to its ability to teach prosocial behavior to young children. Some studies have shown that children were able to generalize demonstrated behaviors in free play situations (Zielinska & Chambers, 1995), while others have found that children were only able to imitate the behaviors in situations similar to those appearing on the program (Paulson, 1974). Sesame Street has also been successful in contributing to children's understandings of complex issues such as death, love, marriage, pregnancy, and race relations. (Fisch, Truglio, & Cole, 1999)

The Sesame Street design has been utilized internationally in order to create similar programs in other countries. Although each production emphasizes unique curricula specific to the needs of its viewer population, ongoing research continues to find positive outcomes in basic skills for these programs as well. (Fisch, Truglio, & Cole, 1999)

Sesame Street has proven to enhance academic skills and social behavior. Children's television based upon collaborative efforts to develop appropriate curricula for young viewers is now more prevalent than ever. The Children's Television Workshop programs and Nickelodeon programs such as Allegra's Window, Gullah Gullah Island, and Blue's Clues have similarly attempted to incorporate curricula into their format in order to provide educational television options for young children.

It is important to note that Sesame Street is designed for children two years and older. Thus, the program does not explicitly target infant audiences.