Out-of-School Television and Schooling: Hypotheses and Methods

The paper categorizes the hypotheses that have related home television use to schooling—hypotheses of time and energy displacement, of interest stimulation, of learning of school-equivalent content, of acquisition of novel intellectual skills, of development of intolerance for the slow pace of class activities, and of learning expectations with regard to what schooling is about and what it is for. Available evidence about overall effects suggests a small effect on reading growth, hints at a tendency for socially advantaged children to be most vulnerable to effects, generally, and is largely uninformative as to the validity of particular explanatory hypotheses. The utility of alternative research approaches, cross-sectional and panel surveys, laboratory and field experiments, and quasi-experiments are examined.