«Sesame Street» and children’s creativity: effects of a psychoeducational programme

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the effectiveness of a psychoeducational programme for stimulating creativity based on chapters of the Sesame Street children’s series, on levels of verbal and graphic creativity in childhood education. 41 5-year-old boys and girls from two third-year infant education classes from two public schools in the Province of Almería (Spain) took part in the study. A comparison group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used, with an experimental group and a control group. Significant improvements in the experimental group over the control group were found in the three dimensions of verbal creativity evaluated (fluency, flexibility and originality), as well as in the graphic fluency variable. Based on these results, it may be concluded that it is possible to stimulate the creative ability of boys and girls in infant education in the school setting by using a psychoeducational programme for developing this ability using a children’s television series as an educational resource for it.