Using Public Media to Support Early Learning and School Readiness

Abstract

This chapter examines how intentionally designed public media supports young children's learning across domains and settings. Incorporating robust learning goals and building on rich research into how best to support learning with media, public media represents a free and scalable means of ensuring that children of all backgrounds have access to quality educational materials delivered in an entertaining format. The authors discuss the importance of context, content, curation, and adult mediation in children's learning from digital media, and provide specific examples from decades of research on the effectiveness of public media in improving children's learning outcomes. The authors discuss how public media fits within screen time conversations and recommend further research in the specific contexts of public media usage to further develop resources with embedded supports tailored to the reality of public media use by families and within the community.