http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/01650254.html DOI: 10.1080/01650250344000019

The educational impact of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’aSimsim: A Sesame Street television series to promoterespect and understanding among children living in

Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza

Charlotte F. Colea, Cairo Arafatb, Chava Tidharc, Wafa Zidan Tafeshd, Nathan A. Foxe, MelanieKillene, Alicia Ardila-Reye, Lewis A. Leavittf, Gerry Lesserg, Beth A. Richmana and Fiona Yunga

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 under-

standing. Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian-Israeli, and Palestinian preschoolers (N ¼ 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 # 2003 The International Society for the2003, 27 (5), 409–422 Study of Behavioural Development

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Charlotte F. Cole, Sesame

Workshop, One Lincoln Plaza, New York, New York 10803, USA;

e-mail: charlotte.cole@sesameworkshop.org, or Nathan A. Fox,

Department of Human Development, University of Maryland,

College Park, MD 20742, USA; e-mail: nf4@umail.umd.edu.

This research was made possible through the generous support of

the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Bernard van Leer Foundation,

and an anonymous donor. The statements made and views expressed,

however, are solely the responsibility of the authors.

We gratefully acknowledge the work of the IETV, Al-Quds Institute

for Modern Media and CTW production teams, whose collective

talents created the first groundbreaking season of Rechov Sumsum/

Shara’a Simsim. This project would not have happened without the

vision and commitment of Dr Lewis Bernstein, the Executive Producer

at CTW (Sesame Workshop). He inspired the teams to use the power

of television to create a series for children that promotes a new, more

peaceful world though mutual respect and understanding. These three

executive producers, Dolly Wolbrum at IETV, Daoud Kuttab at Al-

Quds and Lewis Bernstein at CTW, and their teams made this dream a

reality.

There were many individuals who played a role in the summative

evaluation. We would like to thank the following data collectors and

researchers in Tel Aviv, Acre, and Ramallah whose hard work and

dedication formed the basis for this report: from Acre: Lamis Abbas,

Wafa Suleman, Lubna Tafesh, Areen Abu-Hameid, Neveen Hathoot,

Habeeb-alah; from Tel Aviv: Tamar Reiner, Miriam Rivner, Yona

Mada’ee, Sabar Sharabi, Adi Peled, Eti Leon, Naama Mada’ee, Dana

Zur, Adi Efrati, Ayelet Shamen, Tal Karta, Tair Aviv; from Ramallah:

Muwafaq Barakat, Samira Nator, Rudaina Abu Khalaf, Hiba Al-Said,

Mutee’a Sawalma, Ihsan Turkia, Maha Shielth and Salwa Abu

Shamla.

We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Israeli Ministry of

Education, without which this study would not have been possible. We

would especially like to thank Renee Oseasohn, from the chief scientist

office at the Ministry of Education, for facilitating the data collection in

the Israeli-Jewish and in the Palestinian-Israeli kindergartens.

Special thanks to Ellen Buchwalter whose fundraising talents and

enthusiasm made this project possible and to John Baronian for his

patient hours spent sharing his technical expertise. Additionally, many

people at the University of Maryland assisted in developing the Social

Judgment Instrument. Thanks are extended to Stacey S. Horn, B.

Sefton Price, and Heidi McGlothlin for coding the interview data,

conducting the reliability coding, and for creating an interview-coding

manual. We are thankful for the work of Sam Goldstein, who artfully

created the pictorial prompts used.

Thank you also to the CTW interns, Naomi Greenfield and Maaike

Bouwmeester, and researchers, especially Nell Hanks, Diana Kaplan,

and Maryellen Tipton who spent many hours entering and checking

data; their careful attention to this work was integral to the quality of

this project.

We gratefully acknowledge Scott Cameron for his assistance in

preparing the data collection materials and for his graceful attention to

the many details that moved the study forward, and to Sue McCann

Brown for her editorial assistance.

Additionally, the contribution of the following individuals who

attended an initial planning meeting for the project helped us to

formulate our approach: Boaz Mourad, Nadim Rouhana, Sandra

Sandy-Horowitz, Pam Miller, Rosemarie Truglio, and Bill Yotive.

Finally, we also extend our appreciation to Joel Schneider, Steve

Miller, Baxter Urist, and Cathy Chilco at CTW for their support and

encouragement throughout this project.

aSesame Workshop, New York, USA; bAl-Quds University’s Institute for Modern Media, Ramallah, West Bank; cIsrael

Educational Television, Tel Aviv, Israel; dThe Arab College of Education in Israel, Haifa, Israel; eUniversity of Maryland at

College Park, USA; fUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison, USA; gHarvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

410 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

Introduction

The historic handshake on the White House lawn between the

Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the Chairman of

the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, marked a beginning of

a process in the Middle East that envisioned a new, more

peaceful world. Yet, as more recent events in the region

underscore, the process cannot be realised without formalised

efforts to support it at a person-to-person level, rather than at a

political one. Such an effort was developed in the mid-1990s in

the form of a television series called Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a

Simsim (which means ‘‘Sesame Street’’ in Hebrew and Arabic).

This programme, based on the American television series

Sesame Street, presented messages of mutual respect and

understanding to children living in Israel and Palestine and

aimed to help children better understand their own culture and

that of others.

This paper reports findings on Israeli and Palestinian

children’s cultural knowledge and stereotypes about others,

as well as the effectiveness of viewing Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a

Simsim on reducing stereotypes and increasing cultural knowl-

edge. A unique opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of a

media-based intervention on children’s social judgments

became available when the series was developed and ready to

be aired in April 1998. Specifically, we were able to interview

children about their social and cultural judgments before the

programme aired and then 4 months after the series began

broadcasting. We designed a study to examine the cultural

stereotypes held by Israeli and Palestinian children, whether

viewing Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim would have a positive

impact on Israeli and Palestinian children’s use of stereotypes,

and whether viewing Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim would

have a positive impact on Israeli and Palestinian children’s

knowledge and appreciation of the everyday lives of people

from their own culture as well as those from each other’s

cultures. In addition, we investigated whether viewing Rechov

Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim would have a positive impact on how

Israeli and Palestinian children solve social conflict situations

involving children from each other’s cultures, and if there

would be an increase in Israeli and Palestinian children’s

knowledge of their own culture as well as that of each other’s

after watching the series. Finally, we tested children’s knowl-

edge of characters representing the child’s own culture versus

knowledge of characters representing the other culture.

Building upon earlier seasons of a Hebrew-language

programme called Rechov Sumsum, which was first broadcast

by Israel Educational Television (IETV) in 1983, a new

bilingual series was coproduced by IETV in association with

Al-Quds University’s Institute for Modern Media (a Palesti-

nian production company) and Children’s Television Work-

shop (CTW)1 in New York. Together, the producers created

two bilingual versions of the programme: One primarily in

Hebrew with some Arabic material, which is seen throughout

Israel and Palestine, and another predominantly Arabic

version, which is broadcast in Palestine. Both began airing in

the region in April 1998.

Designed to demystify and break down cultural stereotypes

by introducing young Palestinian and Israeli children to one

another, the programme, like its American counterpart Sesame

Street, integrates serious educational messages in the context of

an entertaining ‘‘magazine’’ format. This consists of anima-

tion, live-action documentaries and studio segments that

present the programme’s own characters and a unique studio

set that features two streets: the Israeli ‘‘Rechov Sumsum’’,

and the Palestinian ‘‘Shara’a Simsim’’. Roughly 50% of the

programme contains material dubbed into Hebrew and Arabic

from Sesame Workshop’s Sesame Street segment library, with

the remaining segments produced in the two local languages by

the Israeli (IETV) and Palestinian (Al-Quds) production

teams.

Children’s social judgments

In contrast to the plethora of studies on children’s gender and

racial stereotypes (see Aboud, 1992; Bigler & Liben, 1993;

Ruble & Martin, 1998), only a few studies have examined

young children’s cultural stereotypes (for exceptions, see

Cairns, 1989; Hoffman & Bizman, 1996; Ladd & Cairns,

1996). The work of Bar-Tal and his colleagues (Bar-Tal, 1996,

1997) in the Middle East is an important exception to this gap.

They have shown that Israeli-Jewish children form negative

conceptions about adult Arabs around 9 to 10 years of age (see

Bar-Tal, Teichman, & Yahel, 1994). Interviews with children

during the preschool period, however, show mixed results. In

some studies, young Jewish children had difficulty responding

when asked, ‘‘Describe an Arab’’. (Many replied, ‘‘I don’t

know’’.) Other studies, using forced-choice methodologies (for

example, choose one of two traits, clean/dirty, to describe an

Arab) revealed that negative stereotypes begin to emerge

during the preschool period but somewhat gradually. This

research, however, examines only Israeli-Jewish children and

leaves open the question of whether Palestinian children hold

negative stereotypes about Israeli-Jewish children. Further,

these studies examined children’s attribution of traits to

cultural groups and did not assess how children evaluate

everyday play situations between Israeli and Palestinian

children. The present study extended this body of research

by including three groups of children (Israeli-Jewish, Israeli-

Palestinian, and Palestinian) and by examining whether

children’s negative stereotypes of the other emerged when

evaluating everyday play situations involving peer conflicts

between Israeli and Palestinian children. Based on the work of

Bar-Tal and others, we hypothesised that Israeli and Palesti-

nian children would hold stereotypes about an adult member

of the other culture. Whether children would apply these

stereotypes to peer situations was an open question.

While there is an abundance of findings regarding young

children’s use of stereotypes, there is also ample research on

young children’s moral reasoning in terms of their under-

standing of fairness and justice (Killen, 1991; Smetana, 1995;

Tisak, 1995; Turiel, 1998). Findings have shown that

preschoolers judge moral transgressions, such as hitting and

not sharing resources, to be wrong based on their negative,

intrinsic consequences to others. They know, for example, that

peers should share toys with one another because arbitrarily

denying resources to someone is unfair. Overall, studies have

shown that young children from a wide range of cultures

understand that moral rules are generalisable (apply to all

people), principled (apply in a range of contexts), and

impersonal (apply to nonfriends as well as to friends). (For

reviews, see Smetana, 1995; Tisak, 1995; Turiel, 1998; Turiel,

Killen, & Helwig, 1987.)

1 Children’s Television Workshop’s name has recently been changed to

Sesame Workshop.

Recently, researchers examined children’s application of

moral judgments to the issue of inter-group relationships (see

Killen, Pisacane, Lee-Kim, & Ardila-Rey, 2001; Killen &

Stangor, 2001). Results indicated that young children view

straightforward exclusion based on gender as wrong (e.g.,

excluding a girl from playing trucks with boys is viewed as

unfair). Young children’s evaluations of more complex

situations, however, reveal the use of stereotypes. For example,

a forced-choice situation, in which one had to choose a girl or a

boy to play with trucks, invoked gender stereotypes.

To date, preschoolers’ application of moral reasoning to

inter-group social contexts has not been examined with respect

to Israeli-Palestinian relationships. Given that children form

social and moral concepts on the basis of inferences they make

about their social experiences with others (peers, in particular)

as well as their interpretations of external social influences,

messages from the media, including television, have probably

influenced Mid-East children’s application of moral judgments

to inter-group situations (see Graves, 1999). What is not

known is how this exposure has influenced their evaluations of

peer play situations involving Israeli and Palestinian children.

Children’s judgments about adult behaviour (such as

stereotypes about adults) may be more readily associated with

implicit information from news media or parental messages

that are conveyed to children, whereas children’s judgments

about peer interactions (e.g., sharing toys and playing with

other children) may be more directly linked to children’s

inferences about their own experiences and interactions with

other children. Thus, we examined whether Israeli and

Palestinian children apply their social (e.g., friendship) and

moral (e.g., fairness) justifications to peer conflict situations

among members of the other culture. We expected that while

children in the Middle East may apply negative stereotypes in

response to adult images of members of the other culture (as in

the Bar-Tal studies), children may also apply social and moral

judgments to peer conflict situations involving Israeli and

Palestinian children.

Use of the media for reducing stereotypes

Research on the effects of television viewing as a way to

promote moral development and to reduce stereotypes is fairly

minimal (Graves, 1999). Since its inception 30 years ago,

learning to respect others has been an integral goal of the

educational television show known as Sesame Street (Lesser,

1989). However, much of the Sesame Street curriculum was

designed to promote cognitive skills, such as reading and math,

and the evaluations of Sesame Street have, for the most part,

measured school-readiness skills (Brederode-Santos, 1993;

Fisch, Truglio, & Cole, 1999; Sahin, 1990; Wright & Huston,

1995; Zill, Davies, & Daly, 1994). A few studies examining the

prosocial effects of the programme (Paulson, 1974; Zielinska &

Chambers, 1995) and the promotion of social tolerance

(Lovelace, Scheiner, Dollberg, Segui, & Black, 1994; Tidhar

& Schacter, 1986) have reported positive results. As an

example, European-American preschoolers had more positive

attitudes toward African and Latino Americans after 2 years of

viewing Sesame Street (Bogatz & Ball, 1971).

Graves (1999) reports that television shows that portray

counter-stereotypic content have been shown to influence the

attitudes of African-American children (LaRose & Eisenstock,

1981). According to Graves, African-American children who

viewed a multi-ethnic cartoon (called Superfriends) demon-

strated: (1) higher levels of identification with same-race

messages; (2) recognition of positive emotions of a same-race

character; and (3) recall of activities of the character along with

cultural features of the character’s environment. These

findings led us to hypothesise that viewing Rechov Sumsum/

Shara’a Simsim would positively influence Israeli and Palesti-

nian children’s social evaluations of peer conflict situations

involving Israeli and Palestinian children, and would increase

children’s cultural knowledge (of their own and the other’s

culture).

Goals of the study

These different bodies of research led us to design our

assessment using situations that involved Arab-Jewish peer

encounters (e.g., conflicts over sharing toys, turn-taking on the

swings). We modelled the research instrument after the

scenarios presented in Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim’s broad-

cast-based intervention. As previously noted, children watch-

ing the series were exposed to a mixed format viewing

experience that included live-action, animation, and puppet

segments. In the programme, characters demonstrated proso-

cial actions toward others that were modelled after the daily-

life circumstances that children might encounter with their

peers. Some scenes directly involved contact between Arab and

Jewish characters while others were oriented toward day-to-day

encounters with peers within a given culture. Accordingly, the

assessment focused on child–child associations that were

similar to those presented in Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim

segments.

We developed a methodology for probing children’s reasons

and justifications to open-ended probes and forced-choice

options, using several different types of procedural techniques

to investigate young children’s social knowledge and stereo-

types of the other. These included: an assessment of Israeli and

Palestinian children’s perceptions of one another, knowledge

about the everyday activities of the ‘‘other’’, evaluations of peer

conflict situations, and knowledge about cultural symbols and

icons. Peer conflict situations were used in this study because it

has been shown that children make very different judgments in

the contrasting contexts of peer and adult–child exchanges.

Peer interaction facilitates children’s development of concepts

of justice and fairness (Piaget, 1932; Smetana, 1995; Turiel,

1983), and friendship (see Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998).

In addition, peer conflict provides children the opportunity to

construct notions of cooperation, negotiation, and perspective

taking (Killen, 1991).

Method

The programme

The Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim series premiered on April

1, 1998 on Channel 2, Israel’s commercial terrestrial channel,

during a time-slot reserved for Israel Educational Television

(IETV). Each of the seventy, 30-minute episodes was broad-

cast throughout Israel and parts of Palestine. In addition, a

Palestinian version of the programme, which was 15 minutes in

length and, like the IETV version, included segments

produced by all three coproducing institutions, also premiered

on April 1 on Al-Quds Educational Television and affiliates.

This series, which includes 20 episodes, was broadcast locally

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (5), 409–422 411

412 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

in five Palestinian cities: Ramallah (Al Watan TV), Nablus

(Nablus TV), Bethlehem (Shepherd TV), Hebron (Al Amal

TV, which reaches parts of Gaza), and Jenin (Central TV).2

Both versions of the programme are bilingual, although the

Israeli broadcast contains more Arabic material than the

Palestinian broadcast contains Hebrew. Additionally, both

include ‘‘cross-over’’ segments, that is, segments in which

characters who inhabit the Israeli street (Rechov Sumsum) visit

their friends on the Palestinian street (Shara’a Simsim) and

vice versa.

The first 13 episodes of the IETV programme were

broadcast in the early afternoon during a 2-week Passover

vacation period for most Israeli-Jewish children. IETV

recommenced broadcasting the series in the summer of

1998, 5 days per week in the afternoon. Al-Quds Educational

Television had a different broadcast schedule, airing the series

one episode per week (with the same episode repeated two

additional times per week) in the afternoons. Both broad-

casters aired reruns of the series.

Participants

Three groups of children participated in this study. One group

was from Israel, in the Tel-Aviv area (Israeli-Jewish children).

A second group was from the West Bank, including Ramallah

(Palestinian children). A third group was from a region in

northern Israel called Acre (Palestinian-Israeli children). The

children were recruited through teachers and other contacts at

local preschools in each area.

Table 1 presents the basic demographic information of

three groups of children in the sample. Although the gender of

the three groups was roughly balanced, socioeconomic status

did differ for the families in the three groups of children.

Furthermore, one-way ANOVA analyses comparing the mean

age of the three groups revealed significant differences, F(2,

265) ¼ 49.425, p 5 .001, between the Israeli-Jewish (5.4

years) and the Palestinian-Israeli children (5.6 years), and the

Palestinian children (4.6 years). A post hoc test with

Bonferroni correction showed that the latter group was

significantly younger in age, p 5 .001. The age differences in

the samples resulted from working in school settings in which

the accessibility of children across the three groups was linked

to differences in the schools’ organisational structures. For this

reason, the Palestinian sample was skewed towards younger

children and the Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Palestinian samples

skewed toward older children. While every effort was made to

match the samples with respect to standard demographic

dimensions, the geographic distribution of the population

inherent to the region’s political situation led to this imbalance.

Procedure

THE SOCIAL JUDGMENT INSTRUMENT

The Social Judgment Instrument (SJI)3 (developed by Fox,

Killen, & Leavitt, 1999) builds upon current child develop-

ment research methodologies that have been used to examine

young children’s social and moral reasoning (see Killen, 1991;

Smetana, 1995). It was designed specifically to assess the

effects of viewing Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim on children’s

social and moral judgments and was created with the series’

mutual respect curriculum in mind. The instrument looks at:

1. Palestinian and Jewish children’s stereotypes of one

another.

2. Children’s understanding of common aspects of the

everyday lives of the Jews and Palestinians living in the

region.

3. Children’s problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills.

4. Children’s awareness of cultural symbols and everyday

lives of the Jews and Palestinians living in the region.

The interview also included questions about the Rechov

Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim characters which were only asked

after the children were exposed to the programme.

2 The differences in the length (30 minutes vs. 15 minutes) and number of

episodes (70 vs. 20) in the separate broadcasts of the series is a reflection of the

expansion in the scale of the project over the course of its development. Initially

the producers had proposed the development of a 65-episode series (that

expanded over time to include 5 additional episodes). These were produced,

primarily in Hebrew with some Arabic content, to be broadcast on IETV and

seen in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza. As the project advanced, however, the

producers recognised that there was enough material developed by the

Palestinian team to also create a series specifically for broadcast on Al Quds

Educational Television and affiliates. These shows used Arabic material as a base

and included some Hebrew content.

Table 1

Summary of demographic characteristics of the sample

Culture

Palestinian Israeli-Jewish Pal-Israeli

Mean Age (SD) 4.62 (0.61) 5.43 (0.78) 5.55 (0.62)

Gender

Girls 49 (49%) 61 (54%) 29 (46%)

Boys 50 (50%) 52 (46%) 33 (52.4%)

Total 99 113 63

SES

Underprivileged 99 (100%) 53 (46.9%) na

Middle class 0 (0%) 60 (53.1%) na

Mother’s educationa (SD) 12.09 (2.93) na 9.75 (4.27)

Fathers’ educationa (SD) 13.51 (3.21) na 10.73 (4.15)

na : data not available.a Mean number of years.

3 A copy of the instrument is available from either Charlotte Cole or Nathan

Fox.

The developers designed the evaluation instrument for

children in the age group targeted by the television series:

preschool and early elementary school. Examiners individually

interviewed each child and used schematic cartoon-like

drawings to aid the questioning process. There were separate

versions for boys and girls, and adjustments were made in the

wording of questions presented to Jews and Palestinians so that

they would accurately reflect the ‘‘other’’ group. Finally, the

instrument, originally created in English, was translated into

both Hebrew and Arabic and considerable care was taken to

ensure consistency across the translations. The children were

interviewed in their home-languages by examiners who were

members of their own cultural groups (Israeli-Jewish, Palesti-

nian, and Palestinian-Israeli). Information gained from an

initial presentation of the interview (pilot testing) was used to

develop the coding and analysis schemes described below.

Children’s stereotypes. In a question modelled after Bar-Tal’s

work (1996, 1997), researchers showed children a picture of a

man with nondescript features and told them that this was a

picture of Anwar (or Yaakov if the child being interviewed was

Palestinian). Anwar was identified as an Arab (or Yaakov as a

Jew). The child was then asked if he/she knew what an Arab

was (yes/no) and if so, to tell the examiner, ‘‘What is an Arab?’’

A follow-up question asked the child, ‘‘Tell me what you know

about Arabs?’’ Examiners allowed the children to answer freely

and examiners recorded their responses for subsequent coding.

Note that these descriptions of stereotypes are referred to in

our analyses as ‘‘attributes’’.

Children’s cultural knowledge of everyday life. The investigators

showed the children three pictures. The first two were of

individual boys (or girls), and the last depicted the same two

boys (or girls) together. For the scenario presented to boys, for

example, examiners told children that one boy was Moshe,

who is Jewish, and the second boy is Machmoud, who is Arab.

The child was then asked a series of 12 questions about the

boys and asked to indicate whether the particular event or

activity was relevant for Moshe, Machmoud or both, e.g.,

‘‘Here is a picture of a bicycle. Who rides a bicycle? Moshe,

Machmoud or both?’’ If the interviewed child was female, the

names Nurit and Fatima were used instead of Moshe and

Machmoud. Note that throughout this paper, only the boys’

names are referenced. (Children pointed to the picture

corresponding to their answer.) The 12 questions covered a

range of everyday activities (e.g., riding a bicycle, going on a

picnic), professions for parents (e.g., teacher, doctor), foods

eaten (e.g., ‘‘Who eats humous?’’) and social acceptance (e.g.,

‘‘Who would you invite to your house?’’). Interviewers

recorded children’s responses for later coding.

Children’s social judgments. Interviewers showed children

different scenarios that involved situations such as turn-taking

on the swings, sharing toys (cars or dolls), and playing a game

of hide-and-seek. They asked the child interviewed to resolve

the scenarios involving particular conflicts facing children from

Jewish or Palestinian groups. For each scenario, the inter-

viewed child viewed a series of cartoon drawings that depicted

the action and two possible outcomes for that scenario:

Researchers showed the cards, told the story, and then asked

the interviewed child to choose between one of two resolutions.

For example, the ‘‘Swing’’ scenario involved a picture of a

child on a swing and a second child standing next to the swing.

The text of the scenario (for Jewish girls) read, ‘‘Shira, who is

Jewish, and Aisha, who is Arab, are playing in the park. Shira is

on the swings. Aisha wants to swing and there is only one

swing. What will happen next?’’

Interviewers showed the child interviewed two drawings,

each of which corresponded to one of two possible endings,

and said, ‘‘Aisha, the Arab girl, will push Shira, the Jewish girl,

off the swing and then get on it’’ or, ‘‘Aisha, the Arab girl, will

say, ‘Can I have a turn on the swing?’ and then wait until Shira,

the Jewish girl, gets off ’’. The examiner then asked the child to

pick one of the two resolutions and justify the response. Note

that these descriptions of rationales are referred to in our

analyses as ‘‘justifications’’.

Children’s identification of cultural symbols. Researchers

showed children a series of drawings and asked them to point

to the picture depicting an image of one of several cultural

symbols (such as a menorah, mosque, Palestinian or Israeli

flag) named by the experimenter. The examiner noted if the

child correctly or incorrectly identified the symbols.

Knowledge of the Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim characters.

Researchers showed children photographs of the programme’s

four main puppet characters. Two puppets, Kippi and Dafi,

are primarily Hebrew-speaking and live on Rechov Sumsum.

The other two, Haneen and Karim, are Palestinian puppets

that reside on Shara’a Simsim. Interviewers presented children

with pictures of these characters and asked them to point to the

character or characters in response to a series of questions

designed to solicit information about children’s familiarity with

the characters, the languages they speak, the street where they

live and their desirability as friends.

Data coding

The examiners recorded children’s responses to each of the five

parts of the questionnaire. These responses were subsequently

coded for use in the data analysis.

Children’s stereotypes of other. Researchers recorded children’s

responses to the questions, ‘‘Do you know what a Jew (Arab)

is?’’, and, if yes, ‘‘Tell me what you know about Jews (Arabs)’’.

During pilot testing of the instrument, we established a set of

12 coding categories as outlined in our coding manual (Fox et

al., 1999). These categories are listed in Table 2. Each child’s

response was coded dichotomously for each category (0 ¼ no

use of the category and 1¼ use of the category). This scoring

generates proportions for each category and all analyses were

conducted on these proportions (see Killen et al., 2001, for this

procedure). Subsequently, coders were trained to reliably

(inter-rater reliability between trained coders was estimated as

kappa coefficients; Cohen, 1960). Reliability on all codes was

.70 (or higher). Coders then coded each child’s responses for

use of the categories. Analysis of the distributions of 12

categories led us to collapse these into 3 general attribute

categories: negative (#s 1–6), neutral (#7), and positive (#s

8–11). These categories were used in the analysis of the data

in pre- and post-test sessions. All analyses were conducted on

the proportions of responses. While the number of children

answering, ‘‘I don’t know’’ was noted, these undifferentiated

(#12) responses were not included in the analysis.

We recorded the child’s social judgments to each of the four

scenarios and the child’s justification of that choice. Five

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414 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

justification categories were used to code the data (Fox et al.,

1999). The five justification categories are presented in Table

3. These categories were derived, in part, from the literature

(see Killen et al., 2001; Smetana, 1995; Tisak, 1995; Turiel,

1998), and from extensive pilot work conducted for this study.

Coders were trained in the reliable use of these categories

Table 2

Coding categories for children’s stereotypes of other

Coding categories Examples

Negative

1. Violent orientation. ‘‘Shooting, destroyer’’, ‘‘acts mean’’, ‘‘makes war against us’’.

2. Experience with violence. ‘‘They shot my brother’’, ‘‘they bomb our street’’.

3. Enforcer role. ‘‘Policeman’’, ‘‘army’’, ‘‘they put us in prison’’.

4. Antisocial (nonviolent). ‘‘Dumb’’, ‘‘dirty’’, ‘‘greedy’’, ‘‘too much money’’.

5. Lack of religious beliefs or values. ‘‘Unbeliever’’, ‘‘dirty’’, ‘‘greedy’’.

6. Negative ethnic identification. ‘‘Wants to be king of Israel’’, ‘‘wants to take over our country’’.

Neutral

7. Neutral attributes. ‘‘He is a man’’, ‘‘he has a store’’, ‘‘takes people to the hospital’’.

Positive

8. Cultural signifiers. ‘‘Different language’’, ‘‘wears different clothes’’.

9. Nationality. ‘‘From a different country’’.

10. Mixed evaluations. ‘‘Some are good, some are bad’’.

11. Prosocial attributes. ‘‘Is nice, friendly, helpful’’.

Uncodable

12. Undifferentiated, uncodable. ‘‘I don’t know’’.

Table 3

Coding categories for children’s justifications

Coding categories for justifications to

conflict resolution strategies Types of justifications Examples

1. Cultural

Cultural identification and/or cultural

stereotype

Appeals to Jewish or Arabic cultural

membership as a basis for explaining or

evaluating other child’s actions.

‘‘He is Arab’’, ‘‘She is Jewish’’, ‘‘Arabs are

stronger and push’’.

Cultural communication barriers Appeals to language and communication as

an explanation or evaluation of another

child’s actions.

‘‘He will not understand the language’’, ‘‘I

will teach him to count’’.

2. Selfish

Selfish motives Appeals to child’s selfish motives for why a

child would do something, or for how an

action is evaluated.

‘‘She wants the swing’’, ‘‘She wants the

doll’’, ‘‘He wants the car’’.

Punishment avoidance or appeal to

authority

Appeals to avoiding punishment for why a

child would do something or for how an

action is evaluated.

‘‘If he pushes him, he will get in trouble’’,

‘‘The other child will tell the teacher’’, ‘‘If

he grabs the car, he may get hit’’.

General anti-social statements Appeals to personal negative preference. ‘‘I don’t like her’’, ‘‘They don’t want to

play with him’’.

Attribution of a rule violation to the

target child

Appeals to the child who is already part of

the game, being selfish and taking too long.

‘‘She doesn’t have any more time to wait’’,

‘‘He took the truck and didn’t let him have

it’’.

3. Fairness

Fairness/ turn-taking/ respect for others Appeals to moral principles including

fairness, turn-taking, avoids harm, and

respects other’s rights.

‘‘She should take turns’’, ‘‘He shouldn’t hit

anymore’’, ‘‘It’s not right to push’’.

4. Rules

Politeness, rule statements, and

unelaborated prosocial statements

Appeals to unelaborated prosocial

conventions and rule statements including

politeness and prosocial motives.

‘‘It’s the polite thing to do’’, ‘‘It’s not nice’’,

‘‘You are not allowed to hit’’.

5. Maintenance of friendship

Maintenance of friendship. Appeals to interpersonal relationships or

maintenance of the group activity as a

justification for a child’s actions.

‘‘They’ll be friends’’, ‘‘Because she doesn’t

have any friends’’, ‘‘They can keep

playing’’.

6. Undifferentiated, uncodable ‘‘I don’t know’’.

and then coded each child’s response to each scenario using

this schema. Each child’s use of each justification category was

coded dichotomously (0 ¼ no use of the category and 1 ¼ use

of the category).

The five categories were: cultural, selfish, fairness, polite-

ness and rule statements, and maintenance of friendship. All

data analyses were conducted on the proportion of children’s

responses. While the number of children responding, ‘‘I don’t

know’’ was noted, these undifferentiated (#6) responses were

not included in these analyses.

Results

The analyses to be presented are organised into two sections.

The first presents children’s responses prior to exposure to the

series and the second presents their responses after exposure to

the series. The two sections are divided into several parts based

upon the sections of the evaluation. These parts examine (1)

children’s stereotypes of individuals from the other culture, (2)

children’s perceptions of the everyday lives of people from the

other culture, (3) children’s social reasoning about conflict, (4)

children’s identification of cultural symbols, and (5) (in the

second section) children’s knowledge of the Rechov Sumsum/

Shara’a Simsim characters. The analyses focus on within-

culture effects. The decision to limit the analyses to within-, as

opposed to between-culture effects, was made for multiple

reasons: First, television-viewing opportunities differed for the

three groups of children tested. Israeli-Jewish children had the

opportunity to view the programme within preschool settings

as well as in their homes. Palestinian children were less likely to

view the programme in the preschool and more likely to view in

their homes and along with other family members (Cohen &

Francis, 1999). Second, there were important differences in

the demographics of the three samples, particularly with

respect to the ages of the children who participated. Palestinian

children were, as a group, younger than children in the other

two groups. Third, the program content and format differed

among the different versions to which the three groups were

exposed. Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli children viewed

a version of the programme broadcast by Israeli Educational

Television that contained multiple exemplars of crossover

segments as well as pieces produced by the Palestinian and

Israeli production teams. (There was an unequal proportion of

segments produced in Hebrew and Arabic.) Most Palestinian

children viewed a primarily Arabic programme, composed of

segments produced by the Palestinian production team with

fewer crossover segments. For these reasons, it was necessary

to approach analysis of the data from a within-culture

perspective.

The results are presented in two sections: The first presents

the data from the pre-test. These analyses focus specifically on

the responses of Palestinian, Israeli-Jewish, and Palestinian-

Israeli children prior to exposure to Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a

Simsim. As such, they provide a glimpse into the state of

children’s stereotypes and knowledge about each other prior to

any intervention. The set of analyses in the second section

examine potential change in stereotypes and knowledge about

the other that may have occurred during the 4-month period of

time that children were presented with the television pro-

gramme. In addition, this section includes information about

children’s knowledge of Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim’s

primary puppet characters. Our independent variable was

gender of the child.

For the pre-test data, we conducted analysis of variance

(ANOVAs) tests on the proportion of children’s responses. For

the pre-test/post-test comparison, we used repeated measures

ANOVAs with time as the repeated factor.

Pre-test findings (children’s responses prior to exposureto the programme)

CHILDREN’S STEREOTYPES OF OTHER

For each group, we conducted a 3 (Attribute: negative,

neutral, positive) � 2 (Gender) ANOVA followed by post hoc

tests with Bonferroni correction. Tables 4–6 present the means

and standard deviations for each culture for the pre-test data

(left hand columns).

Palestinian children. The results revealed a main effect for

Attribute, F(2, 194) ¼ 129.27, p 5 .001. Palestinian children

were most likely to provide negative attributes when asked to

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (5), 409–422 415

Table 4

Proportions (and SDs) of types of attributes given by Palestinian children in response to the question

‘‘What is an Arab/Jew?’’ (N ¼ 99)

Time 1: Attributes Time 2: Attributes

Negative Neutral Positive Missing Negative Neutral Positive Missing

(.61 (.02 (.01 (.36 (.75 (.00 (.02 (.23

(.49) (.14) (.05) (.48) (.44) (.00) (.15) (.42)

Table 5

Proportions (and SDs) of types of attributes given by Israeli-Jewish children in response to the

question ‘‘What is an Arab/Jew?’’ (N ¼ 113)

Time 1: Attributes Time 2: Attributes

Negative Neutral Positive Missing Negative Neutral Positive Missing

(.19 (.05 (.35 (.41 (.06 (.03 (.82 (.08

(.39) (.23) (.47) (.49) (.25) (.17) (.38) (.27)

416 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

describe a Jew, p 5 .001. Examples of the type of attributes

Palestinian children used included ‘‘shooter’’, ‘‘kills my

people’’, and descriptions such as ‘‘throws us in jail’’ or ‘‘beats

us up’’.

Israeli-Jewish children. Results revealed a main effect for

Attribute, F(2, 222) ¼ 14.338, p 5.001, and a main effect

for Gender, F(1, 111) ¼ 178.676, p 5 .001. Israeli-Jewish

children provided more positive attributes compared to

negative ones, though more negative compared to neutral, p

5 .01. As well, boys provided more positive attributes

compared to girls. Among the Israeli-Jewish children who

expressed negative stereotypes, there were likewise disapprov-

ing words used, describing Arabs as ‘‘dirty’’ or ‘‘unclean’’, and

‘‘wanting to destroy us’’ and ‘‘throw us out of our land’’.

Palestinian-Israeli children. A main effect was found for

Attribute, F(2, 120) ¼ 8.613, p 5 .001. Palestinian-Israeli

children were likely to provide more positive compared to

negative or neutral attributes when asked to describe a Jew.

CHILDREN’S KNOWLEDGE OF CULTURAL SIMILARITIES

Children were asked to choose between a Jewish child, an

Arab child, or both for a series of items ranging from everyday

experiences (who goes on picnics?) to occupations of parents

(whose father is a doctor?). Their choices across the 10 items

were summed and examined using ANOVA models with

Choice (3 levels) � Gender (2 levels) separately estimated for

each group.

Palestinian children. Results revealed a main effect for Choice,

F(2, 194) ¼ 66.225, p 5 .001. Palestinian children were more

likely to choose the Arab child for the range of everyday

experiences as compared to either the choice of the Jewish

child or both (M for Arab child ¼ 5.34, SD ¼ 2.27; M for

Jewish child ¼ 2.94, SD ¼ 1.83; M for choice of both ¼ 1.38,

SD ¼ 1.05).

Israeli-Jewish children. There was a main effect for Choice,

F(2, 222) ¼ 9.727, p 5 .001. Israeli-Jewish children were most

likely to choose the Jewish child compared to either the Arab

child or both (M for Arab child ¼ 2.88, SD ¼ 1.81; M for

Jewish child ¼ 4.17, SD ¼ 2.22; M for choice of both ¼ 2.87,

SD ¼ 2.40).

Palestinian-Israeli children. Results revealed a main effect for

Choice, F(2, 120) ¼ 7.997, p 5 .001. Palestinian-Israeli

children were more likely to choose the Arab child or both and

not the Jewish child (M for Arab child ¼ 3.16, SD ¼ 2.48; M

for Jewish child ¼ 2.29, SD ¼ 1.83; M for choice of both ¼4.49, SD ¼ 3.44).

In sum, prior to exposure to the television series, Palestinian

and Israeli-Jewish children were likely to choose the child from

their culture as the one who would participate in everyday

activities. Interestingly, Palestinian-Israeli children, who are

members of both cultural worlds, were likely to choose ‘‘both’’

for these items. We found no significant gender differences.

CHILDREN’S SOCIAL JUDGMENTS

We analysed children’s conflict resolution choices using a

binomial test examining the pattern of choice. After making

that choice, children were asked to justify it. Those justifica-

tions were coded and the proportion of children’s use of

justification categories was analysed with a Justification (5

levels) � Gender (2 levels) ANOVA for each group. Follow-up

post hoc t-tests were employed with Bonferroni correction for

multiple tests. The analyses presented below are by group for

each of the three scenarios. Tables 7–9 present the means and

standard deviations for the five justification categories, for the

three conflict scenarios for each culture. The left-hand column

reflects the pre-test data.

Table 6

Proportions (and SDs) of types of attributes given by Palestinian-Israeli children in response to the

question ‘‘What is an Arab/Jew?’’ (N ¼ 63)

Time 1: Attributes Time 2: Attributes

Negative Neutral Positive Missing Negative Neutral Positive Missing

(.03 (.11 (.29 (.57 (.06 (.08 (.53 (.32

(.18) (.32) (.45) (.50) (.23) (.25) (.48) (.47)

Table 7

Proportions (and SDs) of types of justifications given by Palestinian children for the conflict scenarios (N ¼99)

Time

Time 1 Time 2

Justification Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek

Cultural .07 (.26) .18 (.39) .65 (.45) .14 (.35) .18 (.38) .68 (.47)

Selfish .20 (.40) .22 (.42) .01 (.10) .19 (.39) .14 (.35) .00 (.00)

Fairness .18 (.38) .01 (.10) .06 (.16) .08 (.27) .03 (.18) .08 (.27)

Rules .22 (.41) .15 (.35) .01 (.10) .22 (.42) .26 (.44) .02 (.12)

Friendship .08 (.26) .20 (.40) .05 (.22) .20 (.40) .16 (.37) .00 (.00)

Missing .25 (.44) .24 (.43) .22 (.42) .18 (.38) .22 (.42) .23 (.42)

Palestinian children. Palestinian children chose the prosocial

alternative for the Swings, 67%, p 5 .001, and Car-Dolls,

59%, p 5 .01, scenarios and chose the alternative, ‘‘It’s all

right to exclude’’, 70%, p 5 .001, for the Hide and Seek

scenario.

Examination of the justification data revealed a main effect

for Justification for the Swings scenario, F(4, 388) ¼ 3.326, p

5 .015, for the Car-Dolls scenario, F(4, 388) ¼ 4.737, p 5.003, and for Hide and Seek, F(4, 388) ¼ 111.811, p 5 .001.

Palestinian children were more likely to use justifications

involving rules and selfish considerations for the Swing

scenario, cultural, selfish, friendship, and rule justifications

for the Car-Dolls scenario, and cultural justifications for the

Hide and Seek scenario over all others (all ps 5 .01).

Israeli-Jewish children. Israeli-Jewish children consistently

chose the prosocial alternative for each of the three scenarios:

87% for Swings, 89% for Car-Dolls, and 90% for Hide and

Seek (all ps 5 .001).

Analysis of the justification data revealed significant main

effects for Justification for each scenario: Swings, F(4, 444) ¼8.319, p 5 .001; Car-Dolls, F(4, 444) ¼ 3.797, p 5 .001; and

Hide and Seek, F(4, 444) ¼ 15.634, p 5 .001. For the Swings

scenario, Israeli-Jewish children were most likely to use

justifications involving rules, selfish, and fairness explanations,

p 5 .01. For the Car-Doll scenario, Israeli-Jewish children

used a wide range of justifications, including selfish, friendship,

cultural, and rules. Finally, Israeli-Jewish children used

cultural justifications for the Hide and Seek scenario most

often.

Palestinian-Israeli children. Palestinian-Israeli children were

likely to choose the prosocial alternative for the Swings

scenario, 76%, p 5 .001, and the Car-Dolls scenario, 76%,

p 5 .001. They chose either choice (‘‘all right to exclude’’ or

‘‘not all right’’) with equal frequency for the Hide and Seek

scenario, 45% and 55%.

The justification data for the three scenarios revealed main

effects for Justification for Swings, F(4, 240) ¼ 6.372, p 5.001, for Car-Dolls, F(4, 240) ¼ 4.125, p 5.007, and for Hide

and Seek, F(4, 240) ¼ 37.679, p 5 .001. Palestinian-Israeli

children were likely to choose as justifications those involving

selfish, fairness or rule motives, but not cultural or friendship

motives for the Swings scenario, p 5 .01. Similarly, for the

Car-Dolls scenario they were likely to choose any justification

other than those involving cultural motives. However, like

children in the other two groups, they were most likely to

choose the justification involving cultural motives for the Hide

and Seek scenario.

CHILDREN’S IDENTIFICATION OF CULTURAL SYMBOLS

We asked children to identify pictures of Jewish and Arab

cultural symbols and analysed their responses with a Cultures

(Arab/Jewish) � Gender (2 levels) ANOVA on their total

responses.

Palestinian children. There was a main effect for Symbol type,

F(1, 96) ¼ 21.811, p 5 .001. Palestinian children were more

accurate in identifying Arab as compared to Jewish symbols (M

for Arab symbols ¼ 1.62, SD ¼ 0.62; M for Jewish symbols ¼1.37, SD ¼ 0.75).

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 2003, 27 (5), 409–422 417

Table 8

Proportions (and SDs) of types of justifications given by Israeli-Jewish children for the conflict scenarios (N

¼ 113)

Time 1 Time 2

Justification Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek

Cultural .07 (.26) .07 (.25) .30 (.40) .03 (.18) .02 (.15) .26 (.35)

Selfish .11 (.30) .13 (.33) .02 (.13) .14 (.33) .12 (.33) .03 (.17)

Fairness .42 (.47) .25 (.42) .35 (.43) .47 (.49) .24 (.43) .37 (.47)

Rules .26 (.43) .36 (.46) .23 (.40) .27 (.42) .33 (.47) .32 (.39)

Friendship .07 (.24) .15 (.34) .04 (.19) .08 (.27) .28 (.44) .01 (.10)

Missing .05 (.23) .03 (.19) .05 (.22) .00 (.00) .00 (.00) .00 (.00)

Table 9

Proportions (and SDs) of types of justifications given by Palestinian-Israeli children for the conflict scenarios

(N ¼ 63)

Time 1 Time 2

Justification Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek Swings Car-Doll Hide & Seek

Cultural .00 (.00) .02 (.13) .64 (.45) .02 (.13) .00 (.00) .45 (.48)

Selfish .29 (.45) .30 (.46) .03 (.18) .27 (.45) .19 (.39) .06 (.23)

Fairness .36 (.48) .17 (.38) .06 (.25) .30 (.46) .12 (.30) .09 (.29)

Rules .22 (.41) .21 (.41) .12 (.28) .23 (.43) .19 (.39) .22 (.39)

Friendship .04 (.19) .22 (.42) .06 (.25) .12 (.33) .40 (.48) .07 (.26)

Missing .09 (.30) .08 (.27) .08 (.27) .05 (.23) .11 (.31) .11 (.31)

418 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

Israeli-Jewish children. There was a main effect for Symbol

type, F(1, 110) ¼ 38.484, p 5 .001. Israeli-Jewish children

were most accurate in identifying Jewish symbols (M for Arab

symbols ¼ 1.60, SD ¼ 0.64; M for Jewish symbols ¼ 1.90, SD

¼ 0.24).

Palestinian-Israeli children. There were no main or interaction

effects. Palestinian-Israeli children were equally successful at

identifying Jewish and Arab symbols (M for Arab symbols ¼1.76, SD ¼ 0.47; M for Jewish symbols ¼ 1.67, SD ¼ 0.51).

Pre-test/Post-test comparison

We next examined the data relating to the effects of exposure

to the television series Rechov Sumsum Shara’a Simsim. These

comparisons were made including time (pre/post) as a factor in

the analysis of variance models. Post hoc tests with appropriate

Bonferroni correction were utilised. Results are only reported if

there were significant main or interaction effects with time.

CHILDREN’S STEREOTYPES OF OTHER

For these analyses we examined whether children changed

over the 4-month period of time in their attitudes about the

other.

Palestinian children. The results of the 2 (Time) � 3

(Attributes) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for

Time, F(1, 89) ¼ 5.8, p 5 .02, and a significant Time �Attribute interaction, F(2, 178) ¼ 4.75, p 5 .01. Table 4

displays the means reflecting the percentage of Palestinian

children using each of the different attribute categories at the

post-test. As can be seen, Palestinian children exhibited a

significant increase in negative attitudes over this time period, a

disappointing finding that, as we later discuss, is perhaps

reflective of a more minimal exposure in the Palestinian version

of the television series to scenes including interactions between

Arab and Jewish children.

Israeli-Jewish children. The results of the ANOVA revealed a

significant main effect for Time, F(1, 72) ¼ 9.83, p5 .002, and

a significant Time � Attribute interaction, F(2, 144) ¼ 18.65,

p 5 .001. Israeli-Jewish children displayed a significant

increase in positive attitudes, p 5 .001, and a decrease in

negative attitudes, p 5 .05, toward children from the other

culture. (See Table 5.)

Palestinian-Israeli children. The results of the 2 (Time) � 3

(attributes) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for

Time, F(1, 53) ¼ 7.31, p 5 .009, and a significant Time �Attribute interaction, F(2, 106) ¼ 4.64, p 5.01. As can be seen

in Table 6, Palestinian-Israeli children showed a significant

increase in positive attitudes across the 4-month period of the

project.

CHILDREN’S KNOWLEDGE OF CULTURAL SIMILARITIES

We analysed the data for this section in the following

manner. We averaged the 10 items together and computed a 2

(Time) � 3 (Choice: Moshe/Machmoud/both) � 2 (Gender)

ANOVA for each of the different groups.

Palestinian children. Results of the general ANOVA revealed a

significant main effect for Time, F(1, 97) ¼ 3.84, p 5 .05, but

no interaction effects of time with choice or gender.

Israeli-Jewish children. Results of the ANOVA revealed a

significant Time � Choice interaction, F(2, 222) ¼ 8.12, p 5.001, and a significant Time � Choice � Gender interaction,

F(2, 222) ¼ 8.46, p 5 .001. The significant Time � Choice

interaction revealed that over time Israeli-Jewish children

increased in their nomination of both children. The significant

three-way interaction is the result of an increase in nomination

by boys of the category ‘‘both’’. (For boys, Time 1, M ¼ 2.67,

SD ¼ 2.45; Time 2, M ¼ 4.50, SD ¼ 3.01; for girls, Time 1, M

¼ 3.03, SD ¼ 2.25, Time 2, M ¼ 2.78, SD ¼ 2.37).

Palestinian-Israeli children. Results of the general ANOVA

revealed a main effect for Time, F(1, 60) ¼ 7.39, p 5 .009, but

no interaction effects of time with either choice or gender.

CHILDREN’S SOCIAL JUDGMENTS

The section on children’s evaluation of conflict resolution

contained three scenarios. We asked children to choose

between two options for each scenario and then to justify their

choices. These answers generated two different types of data:

the child’s forced choice for each scenario and the child’s

justification of that choice. We analysed the forced choice using

chi-square tests to determine if there were differences, for each

culture, in choice of alternative based upon time (pre/post test)

and gender. For the justification data, we computed for each of

the three scenarios (Swings/Car-Dolls/Hide and Seek) a 2

(Gender) � 2 (Time: pre/post) � 5 (Justifications: culture,

selfish, rules, fairness, friendship) ANOVA with repeated

measures on the last two factors, for each culture.

Tables 7–9 present the means and standard deviations for

the proportion of justifications given by children in each

culture at post-test for each scenario.

Palestinian children. There were no changes in the pattern of

choice for any of the three scenarios as a function of either

gender or time for the Palestinian children. Most children

chose the pro-social alternative for each scenario at both

assessment points.

Analysis of the justification data for the Swings scenario

revealed a main effect for Time, F(1, 89) ¼ 4.04, p 5 .05, and

interactions of Time � Gender, F(1, 89) ¼ 4.05, p 5 .05, and

Time � Justification, F(4, 356) ¼ 2.26, p 5 .06. For

Palestinian children, the use of friendship justifications for

the Swing scenario, p 5 .05, increased over time. For the Car-

Dolls scenario there were significant interactions of Time �Justification, F(4, 356) ¼ 2.67, p 5 .03, and Time �Justification � Gender, F(4, 356) ¼ 2.46, p 5 .05. Palestinian

children, particularly girls, displayed a significant increase over

time in the use of rule and friendship justifications for the Car-

Dolls, p 5 .01, scenario. Finally, for the analysis of the

justification data for the Hide and Seek scenario, there were no

main or interaction effects with time. In both scenarios,

Palestinian children were more likely to use cultural justifica-

tions.

Israeli-Jewish children. There were no changes in the pattern

of choice for any of the three scenarios as a function of either

gender or time for the Israeli-Jewish children. Most children

chose the prosocial alternative for each scenario at both

assessment points. The Israeli-Jewish children gave more

justifications at the post-test with regard to the Swing and

the Car-Dolls scenarios, F(1, 97) ¼ 6.71, p 5.01, and F(1, 91)

¼ 8.52, p 5.004, respectively, but there were no significant

effects with time for the Hide and Seek scenario.

Palestinian-Israeli children. There were no changes in the

pattern of choice for any of the three scenarios as a function of

either gender or time for the Palestinian-Israeli children. Most

children chose the prosocial alternative for each scenario at

both assessment points.

Analysis of the justification data for the Swings scenario

revealed no main or interaction effects with Time. Analysis of

the Car-Dolls justification data revealed a significant Time �Justification interaction, F(4, 212) ¼ 2.84, p 5 .03.

Palestinian-Israeli children displayed a significant increase in

the use of friendship justifications in the Car-Dolls scenario, p

5 .05. Finally, analysis of the justification data for the Hide

and Seek scenario revealed a significant Time � Justification

interaction, F(4, 212) ¼ 5.06, p 5 .001. There was an increase

in Palestinian-Israeli children’s use of rule justifications and a

decrease in culture as a justification from pre-test to post-test

in the Hide and Seek scenario, p 5 .05.

CHILDREN’S IDENTIFICATION OF CULTURAL SYMBOLS

These data were analysed to assess the effects of exposure to

the television series for 4 months. We report here only those

findings where there is a significant main or interaction effect

involving time (pre/post).

Palestinian children. There was a significant Time � Symbol

Type interaction, F(1, 88) ¼ 12.18, p 5 .001. Palestinian

children’s ability to identify symbols from their own culture

increased over time (M Arab symbols ¼ 1.88, SD ¼ 0.39; M

Jewish symbols ¼ 1.27, SD ¼ 0.78).

Israeli-Jewish children. There were no significant main or

interaction effects with time (M Arab symbols ¼ 1.61, SD ¼0.66; M Jewish symbols ¼ 1.91, SD ¼ .32).

Palestinian-Israeli children. Data from the Palestinian-Israeli

children revealed a significant main effect for Time, F(1, 52) ¼5.83, p 5 .02. These children actually showed a slight decrease

in correct identification of symbols over the assessment period

(M Arab symbols ¼ 1.51, SD ¼ 0.63; M Jewish symbols ¼1.42, SD ¼ 0.71).

CHILDREN’S KNOWLEDGE OF THE CHARACTERS

The production team put a great deal of thought into the

design of the programme’s characters to maximise the ways in

which their personalities and actions could best forward the

programme’s mutual respect messages. The producers created

the characters so that some would be distinctly recognised as

Israeli and others as Palestinian. The team wanted the

characters to be familiar to specific cultures, while at the same

time to have appeal across groups.

We tested children’s knowledge of the primary puppet

characters with this in mind. We were interested in the degree

to which children were familiar with the puppets and their

knowledge of basic aspects that defined them, such as the

languages they speak, the streets on which they live, and their

desirability as friends.

When looking across these dimensions, we found a

tendency for children to be the most knowledgeable about

the puppets representing their own cultures, although this was

not universally the case. For example, Israeli-Jewish children

were the most knowledgeable of Kippi. A large majority, 91%,

correctly identified him, most, 87%, knew he speaks Hebrew,

and most, 92%, knew he lives on Rechov Sumsum (the Israeli

street). They were also more likely to report that they would

like to be friends with Kippi than the other three puppets.

(74% of the Israeli-Jewish children indicated that they wanted

to be friends with Kippi, only about a half, 51%, made the

same assessment of Dafi, the other Israeli puppet, whereas

fewer than a quarter wanted to be friends with either of the

Palestinian puppets.)

Similarly, on most of the measures, Palestinian children

were the most knowledgeable of a Palestinian puppet, Karim:

59% correctly identified Karim, whereas only about one third

knew Haneen, Dafi, and Kippi. They were also more likely to

know where Karim resides. A small majority, 51%, knew

Karim’s language. (As an aside, it is interesting that the

majority, 61%, knew the language of Hebrew-speaking Dafi,

who was an Israeli character who appeared in many of the

‘‘crossover’’ segments.)

Perhaps reflecting their involvement in both cultures,

Palestinian-Israeli children’s knowledge was less skewed

toward characters from one culture. Their recognition was

highest for Palestinian Karim and Israeli Kippi (76% knew

Karim and 66% recognised Kippi). Although the majority

correctly identified Kippi’s language and knew where he lived,

most children were unsure of the other characters’ languages

and place of residence.

Taken together, the results indicate that the children were

more apt to be knowledgeable about and to favour the

characters that most distinctly relate to their own environments

and languages. Thus, it seems that the producers’ aim to

present characters that are familiar and relevant to the

children’s cultures is being reached. Further research is needed

over a longer period of time, however, to determine if, as

children become more familiar with the series, they will also

show a greater knowledge of characters from the other culture,

and be more willing to regard characters from other cultures as

friends.

Discussion

This study examined children’s judgments about others within

the context of the Middle East conflict. There were two

overarching goals. The first was to describe the state of

children’s stereotypes of the other, their knowledge of the

everyday lives of people from the other culture, their

application of moral judgments to inter-group peer conflict

situations, and their knowledge of cultural symbols. The

second goal of the study was to evaluate the effect of the

series on children with respect to these four aspects.

Analyses of the pre-test data revealed that children in the

region of the Middle East, as young as 4 years of age, held

negative stereotypes about the other culture. This observation

extends Bar-Tal’s (1996) findings in several ways. Bar-Tal

found negative stereotypes in 9- to 10-year-old Jewish children.

We found negative stereotypes in preschool-aged children and,

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420 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

further, that Palestinian children in particular were more likely

to provide negative attributes about Jews. These findings

confirm Aboud’s theory that children as young as preschool

age make negative attributions about others based on stereo-

types (Aboud & Amato, 2001). These attributes or descrip-

tions seemed to reflect, at that time, the political turmoil and

state of relationship between a Palestinian population and the

Israeli army that served as a police force over large segments of

them. For example, Palestinian children’s descriptions in-

cluded ‘‘wants to put us in jail’’ and ‘‘shoots at us’’. Israeli-

Jewish children’s descriptions of Arabs were not as negative.

Nonetheless, when Jewish children used negative stereo-

types, they also appeared to reflect the political turmoil of the

region. For example, Israeli-Jewish children described Arabs as

‘‘want to take our land’’ and ‘‘terrorists’’. It is of great interest

that, at this young age, children articulated negative stereo-

types about the other. Previous research on this issue by Bar-

Tal with Israeli children had found negative stereotypes, but

this is the first research describing these attitudes among young

Palestinian children. It seems important to underscore that

children were asked to describe what an Arab (or Jew) was and

were shown a picture of an adult male person. Thus, the

stereotypes were clearly in response to adult figures. It is not

clear that similar negative descriptions would be elicited if the

pictures were of children. Nevertheless, the intensity and

harshness of the descriptors used by the Palestinian children

and to a lesser extent by the Israeli-Jewish children underscore

the presence of ethnic stereotyping by children as young as 4

years of age. It emphasises as well that efforts to reduce ethnic

stereotyping must begin at an early age.

Second, we found that, despite the intensity of negative

stereotypes about an adult member of the other culture, the

majority of children applied their moral concepts of fairness to

the peer conflict situations involving Israeli and Palestinian

children. This extends previous work in the US in which

preschool-aged children applied their moral judgments to

gender-stereotypic play situations (Killen et al., 2001). This is

quite remarkable given the bombardment of negative messages

about the other culture in the Middle East. It provides support

for the power of peer play situations as an important source of

experience by which children construct notions of cooperation,

negotiation, and turn-taking.

Most importantly, the Palestinian children, who were the

most negative when asked about a Jewish adult, chose the

prosocial alternative for two of the three conflict scenarios and

gave reasons based on rules (one should be nice to others), and

the vast majority of the Israeli-Jewish and the Israeli-

Palestinian children chose the prosocial alternative and gave

justifications based on fairness. This was highly encouraging

and provided another strong rationale for the use of a child-

oriented intervention such as Rechov Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim

for influencing children’s social orientations. During the

preschool period, young children frequently base their deci-

sions on rules, and with age, begin to base their decisions on

fairness and friendship (Rubin et al., 1998; Smetana, 1995;

Tisak, 1995). Given that the Palestinian children were younger

(on average) than the Israeli samples, the findings regarding

children’s use of justifications are consistent with the literature

on North American children.

Inspection of the pre-test/post-test data, after 4 months of

exposure to the television programming, revealed significant

changes in use of attributes by each of the three groups of

children in response to the question, ‘‘What is a Jew/Arab?’’

(when shown a picture card of an adult member of the other

culture). Palestinian children displayed an increase in the use

of negative attributes while the other two groups of children

displayed an increase in the use of positive attributes. The

increase in use of negative attributes by Palestinian children

was at first surprising. The purpose of the programming was to

reduce children’s negative stereotypes about each other. Thus,

this goal of the series, while seemingly successful for the Israeli-

Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli children, did not seem to affect

Palestinian children’s use of negative stereotyping. Two

reasons may account for the difference between the Israeli-

Jewish children and the Palestinian children in attaining this

goal of the series: First, the difference between the versions of

the programmes that children viewed in terms of content and

cross-cultural elements and, second, the difference between

the two groups in terms of the salience of the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict in the child’s daily environment: The Palestinian

children were living in a more encompassing and intrusive

environment of negative Israeli-Palestinian relations. The same

factors may also explain the differences between these two

groups regarding the change in knowledge of cultural

similarities. When asked to identify which child participated

in everyday cultural activities at the pre-test, children from

both the Palestinian and the Israeli-Jewish groups were more

likely to choose the children identified with their own cultural

group. However, across the 4 months of exposure to the

broadcasts, only the Israeli-Jewish children displayed a change

from nominating the child from one’s own culture to

nominating children from both cultures. Interestingly, Pales-

tinian-Israeli children were likely even at the pre-test to

nominate children from both cultures. This group of children

has dual identity; they are Arab by ethnicity but Israeli by

citizenship.

Across the 4 months of exposure to the broadcast of the

programme, only the Israeli-Jewish children displayed a change

in response pattern regarding knowledge of cultural simila-

rities. These children, especially boys, displayed an increase in

the use of the answer ‘‘both’’. A change from nomination of the

child from one’s own culture to nominating children from both

cultures may indicate that the Israeli-Jewish children had

begun to understand that everyday activities such as riding a

bicycle were common to both Jewish and Arab children, or that

professions such as doctor or lawyer were common to both

cultural groups. This change was a curricular goal of Rechov

Sumsum/Shara’a Simsim. The lack of change in nomination

among the Palestinian children may be a function of the

programme content to which they were exposed. As noted

above, Palestinian children saw a version that primarily

contained content produced by the Palestinian group. They

were unlikely to see segments presenting everyday activities of

Israelis. Israeli-Jewish children, on the other hand, saw

segments presenting the everyday activities of both Israelis

and Palestinians. Thus, we would not expect the same level of

change across the groups examined as the type of content

might influence children’s knowledge of the normative life of

the other culture.

The pre-test/post-test results revealed that the Palestinian

children changed their justifications as a result of exposure to

the programme. The Palestinian children gave friendship

justifications when evaluating the conflict scenarios following

the viewing of the show. The use of friendship justifications by

children who initially had very negative statements to make

about a Jewish person was quite remarkable. Although the

change was small, it provided a positive measure of the

effectiveness of viewing the show. Interestingly, there were no

changes in the Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli children’s

evaluations of the conflict scenarios. Most likely, this was

because these groups of children were already choosing

prosocial alternatives prior to viewing the show. Thus, in

future research, a more in-depth assessment could be used with

these groups to measure change over time. Another interesting

possibility for future research in this area would be to compare

children’s choices and justifications when presented with

conflict scenarios within their own culture, to their choices

and justifications when presented with scenarios that involve a

child from the other culture.

Children’s identification of cultural symbols assessed prior

to the broadcast followed a pattern similar to that of their

responses to everyday activities. Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish

children were more likely to correctly identify symbols from

their own culture as compared to those from the other culture.

Palestinian-Israelis, on the other hand, were more likely to be

accurate in their identification of both Arab and Jewish

symbols. These data reflect two themes that appear in other

parts of the assessment. The first, and of considerable interest,

is the knowledge base that Palestinian-Israeli children have of

the two cultures in which they live. These Arab children live in

Israel and attend preschools under the auspices of the Israeli

ministry of education. As such, they and their families are

members of both cultures. Thus, they appear to be equally

proficient in identifying both Arab and Jewish symbols. As

well, they were more likely to nominate both the Arab and

Jewish child as participating in everyday normative events. Of

all three groups they give evidence of binational or bicultural

identification.

The second theme reflected in these data is that change in

children’s responses over the brief 4-month period appears to

be a function of the content of the programmes that were

broadcast. Across the 4-month broadcast, only the Palestinian

children displayed a change in accuracy, with an increase in

their ability to identify symbols from their own culture.

Palestinian children saw episodes consisting predominantly of

Palestinian-produced segments. Thus, it is not surprising that

their increased accuracy in identification was of Arab symbols

and not Jewish symbols. Israeli-Jewish children saw a greater

mix of both Palestinian and Israeli content but did not

demonstrate an increase in overall accuracy of identification.

The pattern of data serves both to underscore the state of

young children’s social cognition about the other culture as

well as the potential for a well-designed media intervention to

address and change these cognitions. There are few extant data

on children’s stereotyping of another on the basis of culture.

Much of the work on stereotyping in children has examined

issues of race or gender (Aboud, 1992; Ruble & Martin, 1998).

In the Middle East, in particular, only Bar-Tal’s (1996, 1997)

study of Israeli children stands out as an examination of young

children’s conceptions of the other culture. The current study

extends our knowledge of ethnic stereotyping to a younger age

group and emphasises the possibility of children’s stereotyping

by ethnicity and culture and not simply by physical appear-

ance. These data also present the ‘‘facts on the ground’’ in the

Middle East, revealing the negative attributes that Palestinian

and Israeli-Jewish children as young as 4 years of age have for

adults from the other culture.

It is important to note that these negative attributes were

elicited in response to a cartoon picture of an adult rather than

a child. It is not clear that children would have used such

negative stereotypes if they were asked to describe a child of the

other culture who was their age. Indeed, evidence from the

pattern of responses to the conflict resolution scenarios that

included cross-national conflict (between Jewish and Arab

children) seems to indicate a more age-appropriate use of

justifications for choice of strategy to resolve conflict. The

contrast between children’s negative attributes about an adult

and their prosocial judgments about peer conflicts supports

developmental theories about the different role that adult–child

and peer interactions play in facilitating (and in some cases,

promoting) social and moral understanding (see Damon,

1983; Killen, 1991; Turiel, 1998; Youniss, 1980). In addition,

the prosocial judgments children employed in reasoning about

peer conflict situations provide further support for the use of a

child-oriented intervention project such as Rechov Sumsum/

Shara’a Simsim for reducing inter-group conflict.

A final caveat for this study involved our inability to directly

measure exposure to the television series within each of the

three groups of children. While documenting children’s

naturalistic viewing poses a problem for television research in

general (Cole, Richman, & McCann Brown, 2001), the

difficulties were particularly acute in the case of our study

where we collected data in an area of conflict within three

culturally diverse communities. Children were assessed prior to

the broadcast of the television programme and then again 4

months after the shows were broadcast. During that 4-month

period, an independent study was commissioned by Children’s

Television Workshop to measure the viewership of the series

(Cohen & Francis, 1999). Data from that study revealed that a

majority of preschool children living in the region were exposed

to the programme. Additionally, Palestinian children tended to

watch the programme with their families, while Israeli children

tended to watch the programme in preschool or at home by

themselves.

Even with all of the methodological challenges of complet-

ing an evaluation of the educational impact of the programme,

including the broadcast of different versions, the study reveals

some significant changes in children’s social cognition over the

4 months of exposure. Such effects, however, must be viewed

with caution, given the methodological caveats already listed

and, in particular, the use of different versions of the

broadcasts. They do, however, speak to the power of media

in presenting positive social images to young children and the

potential of enhancing children’s social cognition and knowl-

edge of other cultures. The findings echo those reported by

Graves (1999) in which she notes increased levels of

identification of same-race messages and recall of cultural

attributes by African-American children. In the present study,

all groups of children showed some gains, although those gains

differed by content area. Production of television programming

for the purpose of providing positive images of individuals and

cultural groups for whom there is a history of animosity and

negative stereotyping is undoubtedly a difficult task. The

current data, though a beginning, do provide evidence for the

power of media in presenting positive images and for

potentially changing children’s attitudes and social knowledge

about another culture.

Manuscript received August 2001

Revised manuscript received November 2002

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422 COLE ET AL. / EDUCATIONAL IMPACT OF RECHOV SUMSUM/SHARA’A SIMSIM

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