Formative research and cartoon

In line with the historically well-established trends of “educational television”, particularly in USA, the article identifies three main cultural lines (Cohen, 2001). The first one came with 1960s when the industry turned his attention: to combine entertainment and curricular contents (verbal preliteracy, prenumeracy history, natural science, arts …); to develop cognitive skills (for instance, colour discrimination, spatial abilities and so on). The second line came with the 1980s when the industry turned his attention: to teach, along with cognitive skills, values such as kindness, respect for others, sharing; to develop socioemotional sphere. The third line came with the late 1990s, when the educational television was explicitly devoted more to social and emotional curricula than to cognitive learning. On this basis, the article underlines the importance of formative research for all the stages of cartoon making: conceptual stage, production stage and evaluative stage.