Programmed Instruction with Pre‐School Children: an Appraisal

Abstract

This paper surveys research which has been done on, or is relevant to, the use of programmed instruction with pre‐school children. This includes work on operant conditioning in young children and also work on programmed instruction in special education with children of mental age of less than five, as well as experiments which have been carried out using something like typical programmed materials with normal children of chronological age less than five. The paper also describes the various pieces of audio‐visual equipment which are currently available in the United Kingdom and which can be used to present programs to pre‐school children. It concludes that there is more scope for the development of programmed instruction at the pre‐school level than had perhaps been previously generally realised, especially since expense need not be prohibitive, but that research may be needed to check that there are no long‐term undesirable side‐effects.