Giving Compass' Take:

• New research shows that children do learn new vocabulary words from educational videos, but advantaged kids learned more than disadvantaged kids did. 

• How can educational videos close, rather than open, the knowledge gap between children? What other educational tools are exacerbating the gap? 

• Learn more about educational achievement gaps in the U.S.

A team of four education researchers, led by Susan B. Neuman at New York University, conducted an in-depth study published in April 2018 of 100 of the most popular videos that claim to be “educational” and stream over Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now and Google Play. They include “Sesame Street,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Martha Speaks” and “Dora the Explorer,” all highly regarded programs that frequently turn up on recommended lists.  The researchers found that the majority of the videos taught specific vocabulary — more educational content than critics might assume. They also found that 4-year-olds were actually paying attention and learning new words.

“There are people who say this is wasted time and are very worried about their children watching these media,” Neuman said. “In our view, it’s a shame because children are learning from it. They think that these are passive. They’re not.”

But Neuman also found a lot of problems with the current field. A full third of the ostensibly educational videos didn’t teach any vocabulary at all. And some of the videos that did taught as little as a single word. (To be sure, some of the streaming segments are quite short.) Often the shows’ writers chose unusual words, such as amphibian or baguette, and did not focus on the most important words for young preschoolers to learn. The pacing was universally too fast for most kids to absorb.

Even more troubling, Neuman found that children who already have strong verbal skills, who tend to be from higher income families, were learning much more from these videos than kids with weak verbal skills.

Read the full article about educational videos by Jill Barshay at The Hechinger Report.