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Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood pp 97–133Cite as

What Makes Preschool Educational Television Educational? A Content Analysis of Literacy, Language-Promoting, and Prosocial Preschool Programming

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Abstract

The majority of media exposure for children under 8 years consists of television. Studies examining associations between media exposure and developmental outcomes suggest that television effects are dependent upon content (e.g., educational content predicts positive outcomes, entertainment content predicts poorer outcomes). Preschool children have the highest rates of this child-directed exposure and view more hours than their school-aged counterparts. This comprehensive content analysis of educational preschool television highlights a number of strengths of current programming as well as areas for growth. Specifically, molecular instructional strategies focusing on cognition, language, literacy, and the quality of character interactions were examined alongside several molar features including the targeted viewer age, program structure, and curriculum emphasis. Cognitive strategies included repetition both within and across scenes and some imaginative play strategies. There was limited use of metacognitive and problem solving strategies. Language strategies focused mainly on building conversations and were especially prevalent in interactive narrative programs. Integration of verbal and visual onscreen-print was consistently high and modeling of code-related skills was particularly strong in literacy-focused programs. Although infrequent, there were instances of object mislabeling and use of challenging vocabulary without definitions. Both independently interfere with comprehension because they make it difficult for children to map an object to its referent. The frequency of quality adult and peer modeling and interactions was also low. This is a missed opportunity for educational media developers to model prosocial behaviors. The literacy-focused and language-promoting curriculum goals were generally met. Expository/hybrid content presented a large amount of information that could be overwhelming, particularly for younger viewers.

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Acknowledgements

Support for the content analysis reported in this chapter was provided by Department of Education Ready to Learn Initiative Grant (#9300-71000) to Deborah Linebarger.

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  1. Department of Human Development, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Deborah Nichols Linebarger

  2. Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Elizabeth Brey & Rachel Barr

  3. Department of Psychological Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Susan Fenstermacher

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  1. Deborah Nichols Linebarger
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Correspondence to Deborah Nichols Linebarger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

    Rachel Barr

  2. Department of Human Development, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

    Deborah Nichols Linebarger

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Linebarger, D.N., Brey, E., Fenstermacher, S., Barr, R. (2017). What Makes Preschool Educational Television Educational? A Content Analysis of Literacy, Language-Promoting, and Prosocial Preschool Programming. In: Barr, R., Linebarger, D. (eds) Media Exposure During Infancy and Early Childhood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45102-2_7

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