Extending the Lessons of Educational Television with Young American Children

Abstract

As the availability of children's educational television has increased, initiatives to expand the educational impact of programs have emerged. One such initiative is experiential mediation, a form of mediation in which the viewer physically engages with materials designed to extend the program's educational content. Limited research on the effectiveness of experiential mediation exists. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 138 American children (M = 5.32 years) to evaluate the effectiveness of such mediation with the literacy-based television program Between the Lions. Viewing plus mediation was hypothesized to provide greater support for literacy skills than no viewing or unaided viewing. Further, mediation that incorporated character-branded materials was hypothesized to be superior to mediation that relied upon generic materials. Results suggest that the benefits of experiential mediation may be tied to (1) the connection between the mediation materials and television content and (2) the complexity of the educational content.

Keywords:

• children
• learning
• mediation
• television
• capacity model

Notes

This study was supported by a grant to Dr. Deborah Linebarger under a US Department of Education cooperative agreement (U295A050003). These contents do not necessarily reflect the opinions or represent the policy of the US Department of Education. You should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.This study was completed while the first and third authors were at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Portions of the research were presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Conference, Montreal, CA, April 2011.