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In 1969, the children's television show ''Sesame Street'' premiered on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Unlike earlier children's programming, the show's producers used research and over 1,000 studies and experiments to create the show and test its impact on its young viewers' learning. By the end of the program's first season, the organization founded to oversee ''Sesame Street'' production, Children's Television Workshop (CTW), had developed what came to be called "the CTW model": a system of planning, production, and evaluation that combined the expertise of researchers and early childhood educators with that of the program's writers, producers, and directors. CTW conducted research in two ways: in-house formative research that informed and improved production, and independent summative evaluations conducted by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) during the show's first two seasons to measure the program's educational effectiveness. CTW researchers invented tools to measure young viewers' attention to the program. Based on these findings, the researchers compiled a body of data and the producers changed the show accordingly. The formative research on ''Sesame Street'' was the first time children's television viewing was studied scientifically.〔 Summative research conducted over the years, including two landmark evaluations in 1970 and 1971, demonstrated that viewing the program had positive effects on young viewers' learning, school readiness, and social skills. Subsequent studies have replicated these findings, such as the effect of the show in countries outside of the US, several longitudinal studies, the effects of war and natural disasters on young children, and studies about how the show affected viewers' cognition. As CTW researcher Gerald S. Lesser stated in 1974, early tests conducted on the show (both formative and summative) "suggested that ''Sesame Street'' was making strides towards teaching what it had set out to teach".〔 ==Background and development== According to author Louise A. Gikow, Sesame Street's use of research to create individual episodes and to test its effect on its young viewers set it apart from other children's programming.〔 Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney called the idea of combining research with television production "positively heretical" because it had never been done before.〔 Before ''Sesame Street'', most children's television shows were locally produced, with hosts who, according to researchers Edward L. Palmer and Shalom M. Fisch, "represented the scope and vision of a single individual"〔 and were often condescending to their audience. Scriptwriters of these shows had no training in education or child development.〔 The Carnegie Corporation, one of ''Sesame Street's'' first financial backers, hired Cooney, a producer of educational talk shows and documentaries with little experience in education,〔 during the summer of 1967 to visit experts in childhood development, education, and media across the US and Canada. She researched their ideas about the viewing habits of young children, and wrote a report on her findings〔〔 entitled "Television for Preschool Education", which described out how television could be used as an aid in the education of preschoolers, especially those living in inner cities.〔 Cooney's study became the basis for ''Sesame Street''; full funding was procured for its development and production and the creation of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the organization responsible for producing the new show. According to Gikow, the show's financial backers, which consisted of the US federal government, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation,〔 insisted on "testing at critical stages to evaluate its ultimate success".〔 During the summer of 1968, Gerald S. Lesser, CTW's first advisory-board chairman, conducted five three-day curriculum-planning seminars in Boston and New York City〔〔See Lesser, pp. 42–59, for Lesser's lengthy description of the seminars.〕 to select a curriculum for the new program. Seminar participants were television producers and child development experts.〔 It was the first time a children's television show used a curriculum, which Palmer, who was responsible for conducting the show's formative research, and Fisch described as "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes".〔 The program's creative staff was concerned that this goal would limit creativity, but one of the seminar results was to encourage the show's producers to use child-development concepts in the creative process.〔 Some Muppet characters were created during the seminars to fill specific curriculum needs. For example, Oscar the Grouch was designed to teach children about their positive and negative emotions,〔 and Big Bird was created to provide children with opportunities to correct his "bumbling" mistakes. Lesser reported that Jim Henson had a "particular gift for creating scenes that might teach".〔 The show's research staff and producers conducted regularly-scheduled internal reviews and seminars to ensure that their curriculum goals were being met and to guide future production. As of 2001, ten seminars had been conducted specifically to address the literacy needs of preschool children.〔〔 Curriculum seminars prior to ''Sesame Street's'' 33rd season in 2002 resulted in a change from the show's magazine-like format to a more narrative format.〔 There have been over 1,000 studies as of 2001 which examine the show's impact on children's learning and attention. Most of these studies were conducted by the CTW and remain unpublished.〔 The most important studies that found negative effects of ''Sesame Street'' were conducted by educator Herbert A. Sprigle and psychologist Thomas D. Cook during its first two seasons. Both studies found that the show increased the educational gap between poor and middle-class children. Morrow reported that these studies had little impact on the public discussion about ''Sesame Street''.〔Morrow, pp. 146–147〕 Another criticism was made by journalist Kay Hymowitz in 1995, who reported that most of the positive research conducted on the show has been done by the CTW, and then sent to a sympathetic press. She charged that the studies conducted by the CTW "hint at advocacy masquerading as social science".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sesame Street research」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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