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“I wonder, what if, let’s try”: Impact of Sesame Street’s playful learning curriculum on children’s problem solving

Fri, March 24, 1:45 to 3:15pm, Salt Palace Convention Center, Floor: 1, Grand Ballroom B

Abstract

To assess children’s learning from Sesame Street’s “playful problem solving” curriculum in Seasons 51 and 52, a pilot summative study was conducted with a diverse sample of 53 3- to 5-year-olds and their parents. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all families participated remotely from home via Zoom. For four weeks, two groups (Ramp and Tower groups) watched 12 episodes from Seasons 51 and 52 (with the Ramp group’s treatment including an episode about ramps and the Tower group’s including one about block towers). The third group (Control) watched 12 social-emotional learning (SEL) episodes from Season 48. All children participated in pretest and posttest assessments that included three hands-on problem-solving tasks. The tasks were supplemented by posttest interviews with parents and children, primarily focused on children’s comprehension and learning. Thus, learning was assessed on several levels: comprehension and recall of educational content shown in two episodes, parental reports of real-life indicators of learning in children’s daily lives, and transfer of learning to new problems (reflected in hands-on tasks).

Regarding comprehension and recall, two-thirds of the children understood and recalled the central problem and ½ recalled the characters’ solution in each episode (either fully or partially), even one to two weeks after viewing. Virtually all parents reported that children who watched the Seasons 51-52 episodes learned about problem solving (20%), the refrain “I wonder, what if, let’s try” (20%), measurement (10%), and building (7%). Behaviorally, parents noticed their children demonstrating persistence or trying different things (29%), building (21%), or saying “I wonder, what if, let’s try” (10%). Parents of the Control group said their children learned about SEL content and diversity.

For transfer of learning, although the pilot study’s small sample made it more difficult to attain statistical significance, we found several significant or marginally significant effects: In two sets of tasks, viewers of Seasons 51-52 increased either significantly or marginally more than the Control group in the variety of problem-solving heuristics they used while working on the tasks. Moreover, in two sets of tasks, viewers also showed marginally greater gains than the Control group in efficiency – i.e., how soon they used a particular heuristic that was key to solving the task. No significant pretest-posttest differences were found in children’s solutions, but viewers’ efficiency was significantly correlated with the sophistication of their solutions in two tasks. (This trend was less pronounced for Control children.) In light of the increases in efficiency noted above, it is possible that more prolonged viewing among a larger sample might reveal significant gains in children’s solutions too. Finally, a marginal correlation suggested that viewers who showed stronger recall of the solution in an episode about properties of materials also showed greater improvement in their own initial solutions to a hands-on task with related engineering content, supporting the idea that children’s improvement in problem solving may have been related to their comprehension of related content in Sesame Street. (Note: A full-scale study with 120 families is underway. Data will be available in time for the symposium.)

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