My Topics

14 May 2013

Sesame Street Stimulates Early Childhood Learning Around the World

Keywords: education, health, learning, literacy, meta analysis, prosocial, television, Africa, Australia & Oceania, Eastern Europe & Russia, India & Southern Asia, Latin & South America, Middle East & Central Asia, North America, Western Europe, kids, preschoolers, sesame street, social policy, technology,

Sesame Street is the longest running children’s educational program on television, which uses puppets, animation, and stories to entertain and educate children around the world. According to a meta-analysis published in the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, watching Sesame Street on television has a positive effect on early childhood learning. 

Take aways

  • Watching Sesame Street has various educational benefits for children around the world, even for children in economically disadvantaged countries. 
  • Sesame Street increases children’s learning about numeracy, literacy, health, safety, the world, prosocial reasoning, and positive attitudes toward others.

Study information

  • The question?

    Does children’s exposure to Sesame Street have a positive effect on learning outside of the United states?

  • Who?

    Focus on children.

  • Where?

    15 non US-countries.

  • How?

    A literature review of 24 studies with over 10,000 children in 15 countries was conducted. Based on this review, the extent to which children outside of the US may learn from watching Sesame Street was assessed. The focus of the literature review was on children’s cognitive learning (e.g., knowledge of numbers, shapes, and colors), learning about the world (e.g., health, hygiene, and local culture), prosocial reasoning (e.g., rules for playing fair and taking another’s perspective), and attitudes towards out-groups (e.g., empathy towards children with a disability and different ethnicity).

Facts and findings

  • Watching Sesame Street had a positive impact on early childhood learning among children outside of the United States, even in the poorest countries. 
  • In particular, watching Sesame Street helped children achieve a variety of learning outcomes such as learning about;
    • letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and sizes;
    • environment and science (e.g., coral reefs, plants, and animals)
    • local culture (e.g., music and country name);
    • healthy and safety related activities (e.g., brushing teeth and crossing road safely );
    • prosocial reasoning;
    • and positive attitudes toward others.