When I first started brainstorming ideas for my research project, I had no clue what I wanted to do. I always had an interest in doing something with Bluey after watching another student’s project from the previous year where she watched children's animated movies. Likewise, Bluey had always piqued my interest; while it’s technically a children's show, it quietly yet effectively shows that that's not the case by including deeper topics such as divorce, miscarriages, the struggles of motherhood, and more. Bluey also highlights what a regular family’s day-to-day life might look like instead of following a strict formula, thus making meaningful and relatable connections with its audience. 

At first I wanted to see if I could tie Bluey in with psychology as that’s what I want to study in college. Specifically, I thought it would be interesting to look at how Bluey influences its audience, including young children and their parents, if children picked up on some of the darker themes present in Bluey, or if children are actually using the lessons from Bluey within their own lives.  

Upon starting my research, I found a lot of sources that talked about the “play” present in Bluey, or the make-believe games Bluey, her family, and her friends play. For example, in one episode of Bluey called “Shadowlands”, Bluey and her friends have to navigate around the park by only stepping on the shadows created by the objects around them. Likewise, this imaginary play has been proven to aid in children’s motor and cognitive development (Schmitt). Likewise, many sources also highlighted the presence of adult messages and themes present in the show all while adapting them to a medium that children can understand. This allows both young and older audiences to connect with and relate to Bluey, helping them understand each other (Staff). However, after doing much of this research, I found that most of the topics I was looking at had been thoroughly researched. 

Instead, I started to look at what research had been done on other children's animated television shows, specifically Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. By doing so, I stumbled upon the term social and emotional learning, or SEL. Most educational shows focus on SEL compared to academic subjects like math or English. According to the Collaborate for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, SEL the process we all go through to develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to manage our emotions, understand other's emotions, achieve our goals, show empathy, maintain relationships, and make responsible decisions for ourselves and others. Improving one’s SEL has been shown to improve academics and grades, one's mental health, and the number and quality of healthy relationships (CASEL). Furthermore, I found a paper that looked at the SEL content in multiple different shows and created a tool called the Social and Emotional Learning in Educational Children’s Television rating instrument, or SELECT for short (Christensen).

For my final project, I decided to look at the SEL content in every episode of Bluey using the SELECT tool. For each episode, I will code for when there is a SEL skill present (ex. helping others, naming ones emotions, etc.), how it was displayed (ex. characters talked about emotions, one character helped another pick up a heavy object, etc.), and an example of what was done. While research has been done on the SEL content in other children's shows, none has been one on Bluey specifically. Likewise, with Bluey's prevalence and popularity in today’s children's cartoon industry as well as its ability to positively impact children around the globe if there is a presence of SEL skills within it, it’s of the utmost importance that more academic research is done on it.  

Introduction

My research project is looking at the social and emotional learning skills in Bluey. This means that I’m watching all regular-season episodes of Bluey in order to determine how many times each skill is displayed throughout the show and if that number changes across seasons. I also want to find the most commonly occurring skill, which I hypothesized would be cooperating and helping based on the study I got my meathodology from by Claire G Christensen.

Progress

So far, I’ve watched 79 episodes of Bluey out of the total 150 episodes I plan to watch. I’ve finished all 51 episodes in Season 1 and have collected 104 data points among them. I’m currently at episode 28 of Season 2 and have collected 45 data points so far. I’m doing good at keeping myself on task in class and on time with my data collection. We’re a little more than halfway through data collection and I’m just barely half way through the episodes I need to watch. I feel that I might be a little bit behind, but nearly every day I’m coming into class and spending the entire time watching Bluey, which is usually 8-10 episodes per class. As long as I stay concentrated and work on data collection in class, I feel that I’ll easily finish by March. 

Likewise, as my research has gone on, it has become easier to use the SELECT tool to code for SEL skills. In other words, I feel like after watching so many episodes, it’s really easy for me to pick up on a skill I may have missed in the earlier stages of my research. Of course, single-coder error will always be a limitation in my study, but I feel more confident in my data knowing that I’m not missing as many skills as I might of been beforehand. 

Content

This research process introduced me to the topic of social and emotional learning (SEL) and how important it is for the development of young children. Before my research, I had no idea what SEL was or it's prevalence in children's educational television. Likewise, I knew that some educational shows were "better" at teaching than others (ex. Cocomelon VS Sesame Street), but I didn't know why this was.
My research found that SEL content in Bluey was very prevalent with the most common skill being cooperating/helping, mainly due to it's ease of including in into most social situations. Likewise, Bluey averages ~2 SEL skills per episode. I couldn't find any other data from other shows to compare this too, but this data still shows the consistency in teaching these skills that Bluey's creators work to balance.
If I had another opportunity to continue this research, I would love to look at the real world implications the presence of these SEL skills have on it's audience. While studies have been done on the effectiveness of teaching SEL in other childrens educational television shows (mainly Sesame Street), none has been done on Bluey. With it's differences to other shows, such as being more realistic and authentic, it's key that more research is done to see if Bluey is truly teaching these skills, or even doing it better, than other shows. Likewise, I could look into Bluey's specific episodes more in depth and choose certain ones that center around a skill. This episode could be included as apart of a lesson to teach said SEL skill. 

Product

From my academic paper, I learned that it's incredibly important to describe each and every detail of your research. From the very first source you find to the piece of your methodology you chose to not include, your paper is where you document and share all the steps you took throughout your research process. For example, in my research paper I had to talk about a part of my methodology that I chose to not include in my final research as it didn't have as big of an influence on my final results as I thought it would. However, I still had to explain what my original plan was and why I didn't include it in my final research, even though it never comes up anywhere else. As I plan to go into an honors college, this knowledge of writing academic papers will definitely be helpful in any future research papers or my Honors Thesis, which are incredibly meticulous. 
With my final presentation, I learned the importance of explaining your research very thoroughly to your audience. While Bluey and SEL are fairly easy topics to comprehend, I still had to take the time to walk my audience through how I came to conclusions through my research, definitions of words I was already familiar with, or examples of my research process. For example, in my presentation I made sure to walk my audience through an example of how I coded for cooperating/helping in an episode, showing them an example of what I was looking for. By doing so, this allowed them to understand my research process more and make sense of all the data I'm presenting to them. This knowledge can help me in future presentations by making sure I'm getting my data across while simultaneously making sure my audience understands what I'm explaining. 
Finally, my oral defense and questionnaire allowed me to see how others view my topic that might be different from my views. For example, one of my graders asked if I'd seen an increase in the prevalence of my friends or my own SEL skills in real life after conducting this research. Because my research project looked if SEL was present, not if it actually influenced any behaviors, I had never though of this view. I can use this knowledge in the future by making sure I'm working with others on group projects or future research to make sure I'm analyzing all lenses of a issue. 

Process

One of the most important skills I learned during this process was time management. When I'm given a project as big as this with months to complete it, it's a challenge for me to find the motivation to work on it as it doesn't seem as demanding at first.  Taking part in this class and this research project showed me how just a little bit of work every day quickly adds up. At times I would procrastinate my work and be forced to suffer the consequences later; especially during data collection, I had to do a lot of work outside of class to catch up. Similarly, If I didn't put as much work into the beginning of my research, such as while I was creating my annotated bibliography or planning out my data collection process, the final product would not have turned out as good as it did. In the future, I can work to not procrastinate my work as much as I know the damage the final product will take if I don't focus. 
Likewise, this project reconfirmed my love for psychology! I took AP Psychology in my junior year of high school, but I haden't had the opportunity to look at it again until now. I think psychology is a super interesting and widespread topic and I can't wait to learn about it more when I major in it in college!
Overall, this class has helped me grow as a person and a researcher and will definitely aid me in my future endeavors!

Abstract

Bluey, the popular children's animated Australian educational cartoon, has long been praised for being more authentic and relatable than other children's television shows, yet some still question it's educational benefits. When looking at the educational aspects of children's television, there is a strong focus on social and emotional learning (SEL). While other popular children's educational television shows such as Sesame Street and Blues Clues have a heavy focus on SEL, other shows chose to focus on animation or storytelling instead, such as Daniel Tigers Neighborhood, or ignore it completely. This research project asked the question, "What social and emotional learning (SEL) skills are present in the children's cartoon Bluey?" To analyze SEL content, I used The Social and Emotional Learning in Educational Children’s Television Rating Instrument (SELECT) and conducted a film study across Bluey's 150 regular season episodes. I found that cooperating/helping was the most commonly occurring skill across all 3 seasons of Bluey. There was an average of 2 SEL skills per episode and my research found that there was a significant difference in the different skills displayed in each season. My research highlights the importance of promoting SEL content into a show children already enjoy watching. With the ability to allow students to grow academically, emotionally, socially, and become more well rounded individuals, our society needs to understand the importance of promoting SEL skills in our younger generations' lives as early as possible

Final Paper  &  Final Presentation