The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education introduced a new way of working: researchers, educators, writers, producers, and children came together to shape what to teach, how to teach it, and how to know whether it worked. Sixty years later, we revisit this seminal report with a new weekly series, The Blueprint Outlasted the Medium: The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education, Sixty Years Later.
This week, our contributors return to that model and the enduring idea that the best children’s media is built through cross-disciplinary collaboration, grounded in research, and shaped by children themselves.
In her seminal 1966 study, Joan Ganz Cooney wrote that “there is little scientific data on the impact of television on young children.” Despite this, buoyed by consultations with the most celebrated child development experts and educators, she developed a hypothesis that TV could be leveraged to support access to quality educational content for preschoolers, especially the most vulnerable.
Since then, the field has generated a substantial body of evidence on the ways educational media supports children’s learning and development, all of which validate Joan’s assumptions. We have causal evidence that educational media supports a wide range of learning outcomes, including preschoolers’ literacy, numeracy, self-regulation, task persistence, prosocial behavior, health and hygiene behaviors, and hands-on problem solving. Longitudinal evidence has shown that watching Sesame Street supports low-income preschoolers’ school readiness and academic achievement well into adolescence. We also now know that educational media can support children experiencing a variety of adversities, including displacement, divorce, death, parental incarceration, and parental military deployment.
Mrs. Cooney’s work, and her predictions on the potential for educational media, made all this possible, but her prescience is more expansive than just the effects of educational media. Her vision was about more than what media can do. It was also how it should be created—by centering the voices of the toughest of critics, preschoolers, and evidence-based curricula in the creative process.
With the rise of AI slop fighting for children’s attention, the need for this approach has never been more urgent. What was radical in 1966 has come back around, as a growing number of creators are onboarding educators and researchers to distinguish themselves from the noise and maintain or earn parents’ trust.
Sixty years after her 1966 study, childhood looks markedly different, reshaped by technological advances and by research into how best to serve children and families. We know more about how to best provide nurturing care for young children and support their parents in an ever-changing world. What remains the same, however, is what she understood from the start: what quality educational media can do for young children.
Kim Foulds is the Vice President of Research & Insights at Sesame Workshop. Kim drives the organization’s global research strategy, integrating data, audience insights, impact measurement, and innovation to shape content that supports children and families across diverse contexts.
