The world's longest street: how Sesame Street is working to meet a diversity of children's needs across the globe

ABSTRACT

For nearly four decades, Sesame Workshop has brought the joy of learning to the world's youngest citizens through locally-produced co-productions of the preschool television series, sesame street. With their own puppet characters and sets, these multi-media projects are specifically designed to forward educational messages that reflect the cultural, linguistic and developmental contexts of the children making up their various audiences. This address will describe the process by which these adaptations are developed in-country by local production teams and will highlight examples of content from some of the nearly thirty indigenously produced versions of Sesame Street's television, radio, on-line and other media projects. The challenges of providing a diverse array of educational messages - from gender equity in Egypt, to HIV/AIDS education in South Africa - will be at the heart of the presentation. The talk will conclude with an outline of what research says about the impact of Sesame Street's international work.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  A. General Literature
  A.0 GENERAL