Uses of Educational Television

The Independent Broadcasting Authority produced a chart for primary and middle schools with all the educational television programmes for the 1984/85 academic year listed under topic headings. The authors also discovered a large number of teachers using series for topic work that were intended for older children. Nevertheless, when diagnoses were made of how television was being used that little attempt was being made to incorporate programmes into the curriculum, emphasis was directed towards number and number-related aspects, followup was normally a structured exercise and language was considered as the integral element in mathematics. These deliberations question the validity of mathematics series on educational television for primary school children. Similarly, geographical and scientific aspects can be brought into the classroom by television and, although these may be more aligned to reality than history, they could still rely on authenticity for understanding.