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Making broadcast television participative: Eliciting mathematical behavior throughSquare One TV

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Abstract

The current reform movement in mathematics education has called for new ways of teaching that encourage children to become active participants in mathematical problem solving. In this article, the potential of educational television to elicit such behavior is investigated by reviewing research on theSquare One TV television series. A sizable body of evidence indicates that, through viewer participation,Square One TV can promote mathematical behavior directly among its target audience of 8- to 12-year-olds. Described in the article are the types of viewer participation that have been observed, threeSquare One TV formats that have consistently been found to elicit participative behavior, and several characteristics of these formats that may have been responsible for increased viewer participation. If these characteristics are incorporated into future television-based materials, they may increase the potential of the materials to elicit active participation among viewers.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Children's Television Workshop in New York City, USA

    Shalom M. Fisch (Director of Research for the fourth and fifth seasons of Square one TV) & Susan K. McCann (Research Coordinator for the series in its fourth season, and Senior Researcher in its fifth)

Authors
  1. Shalom M. Fisch
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  2. Susan K. McCann
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Additional information

The production ofSquare One TV and the research described here were supported by the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Carnegie Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Education. Production of the first season was also supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by the IBM Corporation. Additional funding for the fourth and fifth seasons was provided by the Intel Corporation.

This article is based on a paper presented at the 1993 meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Fisch, S.M., McCann, S.K. Making broadcast television participative: Eliciting mathematical behavior throughSquare One TV . ETR&D 41, 103–109 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02297360

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02297360

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