Abstract
TV still gets a bad rap in education precincts, but studies consistently confirm TV's value in teaching rudimentary concepts to children, especially those from low-income homes.
More than four decades since PBS took a chance on a wacky new show called “Sesame Street,” most Americans can't imagine a childhood without it — or the many other shows that it has inspired, from “Zoom” and “The Electric Company” to “Martha Speaks” and “Between the Lions.” Even in the digital age, with all the electronic games and toys now clamoring for their attention, millions of kids tune in to one or more educational television programs every day.
According to recent survey data, most parents are delighted to let them do so (Grunwald, 2010). Overwhelmingly, the American public trusts characters like Martha the dog, Leo the lion, and the ageless Big Bird, not only to entertain children but also to teach them important reading, math, and social skills.
But while children's television — public television, in particular — has come to be seen as a great educational resource for the home, it hasn't been as widely embraced in the classroom. No matter how well-designed and pedagogically sound the programs may be, showing TV in the classroom seems inappropriate — as if the teacher were unprepared for class, or didn't know how else to engage students. Moreover, kids are getting far too much screen time as it is. Why give them even more during school?
Thanks to a number of recent, large-scale research projects, we can put those concerns to rest. Not only does educational television have powerful effects on children's learning at home, but recent evidence documents how it can be a powerful learning resource in school.
Not all uses of TV in the classroom are equally beneficial. The effectiveness of any education medium or program depends on the quality of the content and the ways in which it supplements, rather than supplants, high-quality instruction. However, when teachers use TV in thoughtful ways, they can create a learning environment that dramatically supports learning, especially for kids who struggle with basic content and skills.
READY TO LEARN RESEARCH
For most of the last four decades, funders have devoted relatively few resources to studying the effect of children's television. While the research effort has been modest, it has produced a number of important findings, suggesting that when shows are grounded in research-based principles of effective instruction, they can help kids increase positive social behaviors; increase general academic and intellectual skills; strengthen reading skills; improve math and problem-solving skills; and increase their knowledge of social studies content. Overall, the evidence collected over the last 40 years has borne out what children's media advocates have always believed: Television can play a positive role in child development, and public television, in particular, represents an effective and relatively inexpensive means by which to deliver high-quality educational content to the 99% of American kids, affluent and poor, who have access to a television at home (Wainwright & Linebarger, 2006).
Further, the research effort has taken a huge leap forward over the last several years. As part of its 2005 Ready to Learn initiative — which provided $72 million over five years to support public television shows and related web sites, teaching materials, and community outreach projects — the U.S. Department of Education required the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its partner PBS to devote at least a quarter of their funds to scientifically rigorous research into the effect of their programs on the reading skills of low-income children.
That funding allowed teams of researchers from the University of Michigan, the Education Development Center, the American Institutes for Research, and my team at the Children's Media Lab (recently moved from the University of Pennsylvania to the University of Iowa), along with colleagues at the University of Cincinnati and Georgetown University, to conduct dozens of studies testing the efficacy of media-based literacy instruction. Special attention has been given to the four newest TV shows funded by Ready to Learn — “Between the Lions,” “Super WHY!,” “Martha Speaks,” and an updated version of the 1970s' classic, “The Electric Company” — as well as related teaching tools, community outreach projects, and literacy activities created for the PBS KIDS Island web site. From that research, several notable findings have emerged. First, Ready to Learn programs do significantly and positively influence the development of early reading skills — especially for children who start out further behind. For example, we found that kindergartners from low-income backgrounds who were randomly selected to watch 17 episodes of “Between the Lions” made significantly greater progress on basic reading skills (such as letter and word recognition) than children who did not watch the show (Piotrowski, Linebarger, & Jennings, 2009; Flagg, 1999). Similarly watching 20 episodes of “SuperWHY!” helped kids, especially poor kids, boost their knowledge of letters and letter-sound relationships (Cohen & Hadley, 2009). Economically disadvantaged children who were randomly selected to watch “Martha Speaks” posted significant gains on both targeted and standard measures of vocabulary knowledge, with boys showing the greatest improvement (Linebarger, Moses, & McMenamin, 2010). Likewise, playing online literacy games on PBS KIDS Island and apps available on the iPhone also led to significant improvement in letter knowledge, letter sounds, and targeted vocabulary (Schmitt & Linebarger, 2010).
Kids are getting far too much screen time as it is — why give them even more during school? Because educational television can be a powerful learning resource in school.
Second, combining this high-quality media content with activities and materials for use in classrooms has resulted in extraordinary and unprecedented gains.
Those who choose to air video content in the classroom risk being called lazy, if not accused of educational malpractice.
MEDIA SYNERGY
The combined use of video, electronic, and print materials along with face-to-face instruction — often referred to as “media synergy” — appears to have learning benefits greater than the sum of those individual parts. In a pair of experimental studies, researchers found that media-based classroom instruction combined with professional development for teachers led to substantial progress in early reading skills for children from low-income backgrounds, entirely closing the achievement gap between these children and their middle-income peers on standard measures of literacy development.
One of those studies, conducted by the University of Michigan, used video clips taken from “Sesame Street,” along with related print materials, online activities, and teacher training and mentoring. In a matter of months, participants — all children enrolled in Detroit Head Start programs — gained ground so rapidly that their post-implementation test results matched those of a middle-class control group (Neuman, Newman, & Dwyer, 2010).
In the other study, the Children's Media Lab measured the impact of a similarly comprehensive model, featuring “Between the Lions” and its ancillary materials that was implemented over multiple years in two dozen Mississippi preschool classrooms. As in earlier studies, we found that participating teachers became more likely to integrate language and literacy development into the curriculum, provide a variety of books, print displays, and writing materials, and engage in book reading and writing activities. Students made impressive gains in their oral language and vocabulary, letter knowledge, and phonemic awareness, roughly tripling their scores on standardized measures. As in the University of Michigan study, this intervention brought children's skills up to the level of children from middle-income families (Linebarger, 2010).
Further, we were able to replicate those findings in each of three years — in fact, the positive effects only became stronger. Each year, teacher behavior significantly changed for the better, and each new group of children who were exposed to the “Between the Lions” intervention did substantially better than the previous group.
GETTING OVER TV
Given that critics have railed against television for decades now, portraying the medium as the enemy of all that is civilized and good, no wonder many teachers are reluctant to consider bringing it into their classrooms. In the course of my own career, I have heard a litany of warnings about the evils of television. Critics have even scolded me for conducting research into TV watching, let alone watching it for pleasure. In response to a draft of my first journal article, one reviewer began, “This scholar is smart and statistically competent. I would suggest that he or she find a more worthwhile area of study.”
For teachers, the hostility directed at TV can be intimidating. Those who choose to air video content in the classroom risk being called lazy, if not accused of educational malpractice. It goes without saying, anti-TV advocates might argue, that such teachers only want to push a button, sit back, and let the television do all the work, rather than making the effort to prepare a lesson or moderate a class discussion.
Some will never be convinced that anything good can come from using television in the classroom. For the rest of us, however, the evidence is too compelling to ignore: TV can be a terrific resource, particularly for teachers serving children who have relatively few cognitively stimulating resources in their homes.
Moreover, children who are economically disadvantaged tend to watch more television than their more affluent peers (Piotrowski & Linebarger, 2010). No amount of railing against TV has managed to change such viewership patterns. But as children's media advocates have long argued, it is possible to take advantage of that preference and shape it so that time spent watching becomes time spent learning. Indeed, our studies have found that when children believe that television is useful for learning, and when they believe themselves to be competent at learning from TV, they do, in fact, learn more from watching.
I'm not suggesting that educators should turn down the lights, turn on the TV, and let the video do all the teaching. The value of any medium depends on a teacher's ability to integrate it into the classroom.
Television can never replace teachers. But teachers can use television well, taking advantage of its strengths. At the very least, teachers — preK and elementary teachers, in particular — should check out the programs and media-based interventions that researchers have found to be so effective. My guess is that they'll like what they see. And if they do choose to bring characters like Elmo, Leona, Martha, and Super Why into the classroom, their students will have a great time watching and learning.