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International Journal of Behavioral Development
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The educational impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim: A Sesame Street television series to promote respect and understanding among children living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza

Charlotte F. Cole

Sesame Workshop, New York, USA

Cairo Arafat

Al-Quds University’s Institute for Modern Media, Ramallah, West Bank

Chava Tidhar

Israel Educational Television, Tel Aviv, Israel

Wafa Zidan Tafesh

The Arab College of Education in Israel, Haifa, Israel

Nathan A. Fox

Melanie Killen

Alicia Ardila-Rey

University of Maryland at College Park, USA

Lewis A. Leavitt

University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA

Gerry Lesser

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Beth A. Richman

Fiona Yung

Sesame Workshop, New York, USA

A pre-and post-test study assessed the effects of Israeli and Palestinian children’s viewing of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim, a television series presenting messages of mutual respect and understanding. Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian-Israeli, and Palestinian preschoolers (N = 275) were interviewed about their social judgments. Results showed that although some of the children had negative conceptions about adult Arabs and Jews, children, on the whole, did not invoke these stereotypes when evaluating peer conflict situations between Israeli and Palestinian children. Exposure to the programme was linked to an increase in children’s use of both prosocial justifications to resolve conflicts and positive attributes to describe members of the other group. Palestinian children’s abilities to identify symbols of their own culture increased over time. The results indicate the effectiveness of media-based interventions such as Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim on countering negative stereotypes by building a peer-oriented context that introduces children to the everyday lives of people from different cultures.

International Journal of Behavioral Development, Vol. 27, No. 5, 409-422 (2003)
DOI: 10.1080/01650250344000019
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 International Journal of Behavioral DevelopmentHome page
C. F. Cole, D. B. Labin, and M. del Rocio Galarza
Begin with the children: What research on Sesame Street's international coproductions reveals about using media to promote a new more peaceful world
International Journal of Behavioral Development, July 1, 2008; 32(4): 359 - 365.
[Abstract] [PDF]