Research and development at the Children's Television Workshop

Since its establishment in 1968, the Children's Television Workshop (CTW)—as a matter of policy—has incorporated research into the process of designing and producing educational materials. The first CTW project to use this team approach wasSesame Street, the educational television series created for in-home viewing by preschoolers. Today, the scope of CTW's efforts has widened dramatically to include other media (home video, print, computer software), other learning environments (schools, community organizations, afterschool child-care settings), and other national cultures. This article introduces this issue ofETR&D, which has been authored entirely by CTW researchers, producers, and executives. It describes CTW's approach to research and development, and sets out in broad terms the opportunities and constraints imposed by the environments in which the various projects and productions function.     

Research and development of print materials at the Children's Television Workshop

The mission of research within The Magazine Group of the Children's Television Workshop is fourfold: (a) to ensure that each editorial product is comprehensible to and developmentally appropriate for its intended target audience, (b) to conduct formative and summative evaluations of editorial material for the Group's editors, (c) to keep all staff members of The Magazine Group apprised of the latest academic research in child development and education, and (d) to serve as an in-house advertising and market-research arm for the publisher. This article provides case studies of how research serves each of these functions and concludes with observations on how to optimize the effectiveness of print materials for children, parents, and elementary school teachers.     

Selected bibliography of research on programming at the Children's Television Workshop

This article is an annotated bibliography of 36 formative, summative, and theoretical research studies on the four educational children's television series the Children's Television Workshop has produced since 1969:Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, andSquare One TV.     

The Children's Television Workshop goes to school

Repackaging existing educational television series to fit the needs of more narrowly defined audiences is a cost-effective way of delivering high-quality educational television into the schools. This article discusses both the technological and program-design barriers to wider use of television in classroom instruction and details the steps that the Children's Television Workshop took to make3-2-1 Contact, its educational television science series, a more effective science teaching tool.     

Children's Television Experience in Two Cultures

Research concerning children and television has concentrated more on their behaviour following viewing than on their personal experiences of this medium and the subjects are commonly American children from a distinctive television milieu. This study investigated first‐person reports of children from two rather different television cultures—US and West German (FRG). It was hypothesised that Americans would be more pro‐television, and thereby more dependent on television, more accepting of programmed violence and more fantasy‐involved in programme content; while experiencing less parental control/influence than West Germans. A sample of 93 FRG and 87 US children aged 10‐12 responded to a television‐viewing questionnaire of 34 items. The American children were significantly more pro‐television than the West Germans, and this was reflected in higher dependency and lower parental control scores. Responses to television fantasy and violence proved ambiguous, and no significant programme character preference differences were found. A principal components analysis of the American scores supported the intuitive item groupings.     

Children's Views on Quality Standards for Children's Television Programs

Extending a recent study of the standards mothers apply in evaluating the quality of children's programs (Nikken et al., 1996), this study investigated the standards children between 9 and 12 years of age (N = 427) use to evaluate the quality of four types of children's programs: children's news programs, educational programs for children, dramatic programs for children, and cartoons. Data were collected by means of questionnaires. A factor analysis resulted in a list of nine types of quality standards. The two quality standards children considered most important were: (a) comprehensibility, and (b) aesthetic quality. Additional standards were: (c) entertainment, (d) involvement, (e) credibility, (f) innocuousness, (g) restfulness, (h) thought provocation, and (i) presence of role models. The importance children attached to the nine quality standards varied with both program type and child characteristics. Seven of the quality standards found in the present study are similar to the maternal quality standards observed in Nikken et al. ‘s study. The children in the present study generally viewed these seven quality standards as less important than the mothers in Nikken et al.’s study. However, the relative importance children and mothers attached to these quality standards showed similarity, especially in the case of cartoons, and to a lesser extent for children's news programs and dramatic programs.     

Television Police Dramas and Children's Beliefs about the Police

An experimental study was carried out among three groups of children aged 10 to 16 years, two of whom were shown episodes from two UK‐produced police drama series and the other (control group) viewed nothing. Children were tested one week before the viewing sessions and immediately afterwards with a series of questions about their perceptions of the police and police work, their real life contact with the police or crime, and details of their television viewing habits and demography. Both viewing groups were tested for their comprehension of the police drama episode they had been shown. Results showed that older children were better able than younger children to follow dramatic plots, but that the evidence for an effect of single television drama episodes on children's beliefs about the police was less clear‐cut. Both children in the two viewing groups and those in the control group exhibited some shifts in their perceptions of the police. Children who watched the television episodes, however, were more likely to show opinion shifts in relation to specific attributes of the police or police work which were strongly featured in the programmes.     

Maternal Quality Standards for Children's Television Programs

On the basis of telephone interviews carried out among a random sample of mothers with children between three and 12 years of age (n = 357), this study investigated the standards mothers use to evaluate the quality of four types of children's television programs: cartoons, news programs for children, educational children's programs, and dramatic children's programs. A factor analysis resulted in a list of seven types of quality standards that, in mothers' eyes, children's programs should satisfy. The three quality standards mothers considered most important for children's programs were: (a) comprehen‐sibility, (b) aesthetic quality, and (c) elicitation of involvement. Additional standards were: (d) entertainment, (e) innocuousness (absence of detrimental effects), (f) credibility, and (g) presence of role models. According to mothers, credibility was a standard that should be fulfilled primarily by news and educational programs for children. For news programs, aesthetic quality, entertainment, and the presence of role models were thought to be minor considerations. Less‐educated mothers were more concerned about the entertainment value of children's programs than better‐educated mothers. As compared to mothers with older children, mothers with younger children were more likely to consider innocuousness important, and to view credibility as unimportant in children's programs.     

Television Formats and Children's Classifications of their Viewing

Children's ability to classify television programmes by genre has been depicted as significant in the development of children as viewers and employed as a variable in researching such development. This article reports a research study, employing the repertory grid procedure with 9‐10 year olds, designed to investigate the constructs children employ in describing and differentiating television programmes. Recent approaches to children's viewing have begun to prioritise their construction of meaning in relation to broadcast television. This study indicates that 9‐10 year olds' classifications of their viewing do not conform to those assumed in many earlier studies.     

Parental Mediation of Children's Viewing in a Changing Television Environment

For 25 years, Israeli television operated as a virtual monopoly, with one single channel shared by Educational TV and the Public Broadcasting Authority. Young viewers were exposed to non‐commercial quality programs primarily geared for children. The introduction of cable television challenges the ways parents control their children's viewing and fills the role of mediators between television and the child. This study is based on two surveys among parents of Israeli children aged 2‐8. The first was conducted with 537 parents in 1989, prior to the introduction of cable TV, and the second with 552 parents who had cable in 1993, when cable TV penetrated half of all Israeli homes. The results indicate that the introduction of cable TV changed strategies of parental control and mediation and parents’ assessment of television's influence on children. Active parental mediation was closely related to the attribution of learning values to children's viewing and to gratifications attributed to educational television broadcasts. Loosening of control and allowance for independent children's viewing was closely related to the attribution of entertainment value to children's viewing and to viewing of cable television.     

Physical Disability on Children's Television Programming: A Content Analysis

Research Findings: Media representations of physical disability can influence the attitudes of child audiences. In the current study, the depiction of physical disability was analyzed in more than 400 episodes of children's television programming to better understand how media depict physical disability to children and, in turn, how exposure may influence children's attitudes toward this social minority. Characters with a physical disability were rare. When present, characters with a physical disability tended to be older White males. The disabilities were not central to the characters' importance, but the characters themselves were not central to the plot. A majority of characters with a physical disability were depicted as morally good, attractive, and satisfied with life. Able-bodied characters were shown as treating characters with a physical disability the same way they treated other able-bodied characters. Practice or Policy: The results of the current study could be utilized by policymakers, media professionals, and educators in an effort to increase depictions of physical disability in children's programming as a method of integrating individuals with physical disabilities into a predominantly able-bodied society.     

模拟电视和全数字高清晰度电视的比较研究

本文分析了模拟电视的缺陷, 介绍国际上和我国对全数字HDTV 的研究、开发等情况, 简述全数字HDTV 的各方面优点和技术的可实施性, 说明全数字HDTV 是电视发展的必然性趋势.     

Working with the new generation of interactive media technologies in schools: CD-I and CDTV

A preliminary evaluation of classroom use of CD-I and CDTV in five schools is described. Information is provided on the pedagogical, operational, and logistical characteristics of these interactive media technologies compared to interactive video. A number of benefits are described, but it is suggested that poorly designed or inappropriate software and technology fatigue amongst teachers contribute to the low take-up of these systems in the classroom.     

儿童戏剧工作坊对幼专生艺术素养培育的启示

幼专生是未来幼儿园教师的储备力量,幼专生的艺术素养对于这一职业是至关重要的。在学校的常规教学中,对幼专生艺术素养的培养往往是通过学科教学进行的,是零散且不完整的。儿童戏剧工作坊是一种综合的艺术形式,通过儿童戏剧工作坊的建立和实施,能提高幼专生整体的艺术素养,通过教师和学生之间形成双主体形式的学习共同体,加强与幼儿园戏剧教育的有机联系,在实践中不断提高幼专生的艺术素养,培育优秀的儿童戏剧教育师资力量。     

Children's Attention to and Comprehension of Explicit versus Implicit Information on Television

The present study focused primarily on children's processing of two different kinds of information contained in two animations. The two animations were divided into 24 and 10 sections. Each section was classified as an explicit or implicit section concerning the derivation of the answer to the question based on each section. The subjects were 48 kindergartners (aged 4 and 5) who were divided into two groups to view these two animations. The group receiving a distraction stimulus (slides projected on a curtain) was designated as the distractors group while the other with no distractors was designated as the no‐distractors group. The results for children of both age 4 and 5 fell into three categories. (1) Distractive slides significantly reduced children's visual attention to both explicit information and implicit information. There was no significant attention difference between age 4 and 5. (2) Distraction produced little effect on children's comprehension of implicit information while producing a significant reduction in the comprehension of explicit information. (3) Children aged 5 markedly outperformed those aged 4 on the comprehension of implicit information. It was suggested that children processed the implicit information actively whereas they processed the explicit information reactively. Results also proved that preschoolers have the ability to comprehend implied information, and that this ability increases substantially with age.     

Research into School Television

In the field of research into school television there exists at present no adequate overall grasp of the aims that should be set. I am referring here mainly to public television broadcasts for schools. Admittedly a great number of starts have been made in Europe; there have been many experiments concerning school television broadcasts and there have been a good many theoretical discussions—but as a whole the situation is far from satisfactory.