Sesame street as a continuing experiment

Abstract

After 22 years,Sesame Street continues to be a television experiment designed to prepare preschool children, especially poor inner-city children, for school. The success ofSesame Street can be attributed to the unique partnership the Children's Television Workshop forged early on between producers and researchers on the project. Three institutional mechanisms—curriculum seminars, theWriters' Notebook, and extensive child testing—create formal opportunities for producers and researchers to explore new topics and to learn more about preschool children and how they respond to the program. This article describes each of these mechanisms and presents a case study that exemplifies how researchers, producers, and writers worked together to developSesame Street's new geography curriculum.