The
initiatives to develop and implement life skills education in high schools have
been undertaken in many countries around the world. Life skills education is
aimed at facilitating the development of psychosocial skills that are required
to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life. It includes the
application of life skills in the context of specific risk situations and in
situations where children and adolescents need to be empowered to promote and
protect their rights.
Numerous
different life skills programmers identified five basic areas of life skills
that are relevant across cultures. The decision-making and problem-solving;
creative thinking and critical thinking; communication and interpersonal skills
self-awareness and empathy coping with emotions and coping with stress.
There
are many different reasons why these life skills are taught in different
countries. In Zimbabwe and Thailand, the impetus for initiating life skills
education was the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In Mexico, it was the prevention of
adolescent pregnancy. In the United Kingdom, an important life skills
initiative was set up to contribute to child abuse prevention, and in the USA,
there are numerous life skills programmers for the prevention of substance
abuse and violence.
In
South Africa and Colombia an important stimulus for life skills education has
been the desire to create a curriculum for education for life, called “Life
Orientation” education in South Africa and “Integral Education” in Colombia.
There are many initiatives of this nature in which primary prevention
objectives is, life skills education has been developed to promote the positive
socialization of children.
Many
countries are now considering the development of life skills education in
response to the need to reform traditional education systems. That appear to be
out of step with the realities of modern social and economic life. Also,
problems such as violence in schools and student drop-out are crippling the
ability of school systems to achieve their academic goals.
Furthermore,
its wide-ranging applications in primary prevention and the advantages. That it
can bring for education systems, life skills education lays the foundation for
learning skills that are in great demand in today’s job markets.
The
purpose to support the advancement of life skills education. It could be an
opportunity for different organizations to clarify and agree upon a common
conceptual basis for support from the United Nations system to facilitate the development
of life skills education in schools.
It
generates consensus as to the broad definition and objectives of life skills
education and strategies for its implementation. It Need to improve
collaboration between the various agencies working to support life skills
education in high schools. There is a wide range of key issues, summarized as
below.
· The definition of “life
skills”;
· The reasons forteaching life
skills;
· Life skills education in
schools these days.
· Life skills outside schools.
Life
skills education need to strengthen and improve school health. Also promote the
development of long-term and holistic life skills curricula in schools. And
promote democracy, gender equality and peace; prevent health and social
problems including psychoactive substance use, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy
and violence.
Dealing
with conflict that cannot be fixed, dealing with authority, solving problems,
making and keeping friends / relationships, cooperation, self-awareness,
creative thinking, decision-making, critical thinking, dealing with stress,
negotiation, clarification of values, resisting pressure, coping with
disappointment, planning, empathy, dealing with emotions, assertiveness, active
listening, respect, tolerance, trust, sharing, sympathy, compassion,
sociability, self-esteem.
Moreover,
it the need of times to cater the issue of adolescents; the importance of
supporting life skills initiatives for children who do not attend school. The
term “life skills” is open to wide interpretation. There should consensus on
using the term to refer to psychosocial skills, personal, social,
interpersonal, cognitive, affective, universal issues to identify life skills.
Make a list of items as what are and what are not life skills.
The
promotion of self-esteem, is clearly an important goal for life skills
education, but is it a skill? For example, self-esteem, sociability, sharing,
compassion, respect and tolerance are all desirable qualities, but, it can be
argued, are not skills. Because skills are abilities. Hence it should be
possible to practice life skills as abilities.
Self-esteem,
sociability and tolerance are not taught as abilities. Rather, learning such
qualities is facilitated by learning and practicing life skills, such as
self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.
Another
area of debate for the identification of place of physical or perceptual motor
skills, such as preparing an oral rehydration solution. What are these to be
called? If physical skills are not accurate enough, two suggestions must to
call these “health skills” or “practical skills”.
There
should be clear consensus that livelihood skills such as crafts, money
management and entrepreneurial skills are not life skills. However, the
teaching of livelihood skills can be designed to be complementary to life
skills education, and vice versa. Why teach life skills?
There
should be considered that life skills are indispensable for the promotion of
healthy child and adolescent development primary prevention of some key causes
of child and adolescent death, disease and disability socialization preparing
young people for changing social circumstances.
Life
skills education contributes to basic education gender equality democracy good
citizenship child care and protection quality and efficiency of the education
system the promotion of lifelong learning quality of life the promotion of
peace. The learning of life skills might contribute to the utilization of
appropriate health services by young people.
Areas
of primary prevention for which life skills are considered essential include
adolescent pregnancy HIV/AIDS violence child abuse suicide. The other problems
related to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other psychoactive substances
injuries accidents racism conflict environmental issues.
Also,
its time to prepare a Child-friendly Checklist for Schools to provide a tool
for assessing the social environment of schools. That should be based on the
assessment of school policies and the practices of school staff. Demands of
modern life, poor parenting, changing family structure, dysfunctional
relationships, impacting of social media, new understanding of young people’s
needs, decline of religion, rapid sociocultural change. The following reasons
why life skills are essential for primary prevention listed in the state of the
art in life skills education in schools.
It is
the right time to emphasized on life skills education. Which is already
happening, and that it is possible for United Nations agencies to speed up its
development at country level. Many teachers are already engaging in activities
related to the development of life skills but need support to create effective
approaches to life skills education for health promotion and primary
prevention.
Life
skills are generic skills, relevant to numerous diverse experiences throughout
life. They should be taught as such, to gain maximum impact from life skills
lessons. Though, for an effective contribution to any domain of prevention,
life skills should also be applied in the context of typical risk situations.
Facilitating
the learning of life skills is a central component to promote healthy behavior
and mental well-being. To be effective, the teaching of life skills is coupled
with the teaching of health information and the promotion of positive (health
promoting and pro-social) attitudes and values.
The
development of life skills requires modelling of life skills by school staff
and a “safe”, supportive classroom environment, that is conducive to the
practice and reinforcement of skills. Furthermore, life skills education needs
to be developed as part of a whole school initiative designed to support the
healthy psychosocial development of children and adolescents, for example,
through the promotion of child-friendly practices in schools.
To be
effective, life skills lessons should be designed to achieve clearly stated
learning objectives for each activity. Life skills learning is facilitated
using participatory learning methods and is based on a social learning process
which includes: hearing an explanation of the skill in question; observation of
the skill (modelling); practice of the skill in selected situations in a
supportive learning environment; and feedback about individual performance of
skills.
Practice
of skills is facilitated by role-playing in typical scenarios, with a focus on
the application of skills and the effect that they have on the outcome of a
hypothetical situation. Skills learning is also facilitated by using skills
learning “tools”, e.g. by working through steps in the decision- making
process.
Life
skills education should be designed to enable children and adolescents to
practice skills in progressively more demanding situations for example, by
starting with skills learning in non-threatening, low-risk everyday situations
and progressively moving on to the application of skills in threatening,
high-risk situations.
Other
important methods used to facilitate life skills learning include group work,
discussion, debate, story-telling, peer-supported learning and practical
community development projects. Practical advice offered during the Meeting
included: be humorous and make it relevant!
Life
skills learning cannot be facilitated based on information or discussion alone.
Moreover, it is not only an active learning process, it must also include
experiential learning, i.e. practical experience and reinforcement of the
skills for each student in a supportive learning environment.
The
introduction of life skills education requires teacher training to promote
effective implementation of the programmed. This can be provided as in-service
training, but efforts should also be made to introduce it in teacher training
colleges. The successful implementation of a life skills programmed depends on:
the development of training materials for teacher trainers; a teaching manual,
to provide lesson plans and a framework for a sequential, developmentally appropriate
programmed; teacher training and continuing support in the use of the
programmed materials.
The
scope of life skills education varies with the capacity of education systems.
Although programmers can begin on a small scale and for a targeted age group,
as a longer-term goal life skills education should be developed so that it
continues throughout the school years –from school entry until school leaving
age. Life skills education can be designed to be spread across the curriculum,
to be a separate subject, to be integrated into an existing subject, or a mix
of all of these.
The
development of life skills education is a dynamic and evolving process, which
should involve children, parents and the local community in making decisions
about the content of the programmed. Once a programmed has been developed,
there needs to be scope for local adaptation over time and in different
contexts.
In the
short term after three to six months of implementation, the effectiveness of a
life skills must be measured in terms of the specific learning objectives of
the life skills lessons. The other factors such as changes in self-esteem,
perceptions of self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions.
Only in
the longer term after at least a year is feasible to evaluate life skills
education in terms of the prevention of health-damaging and antisocial
behavior. Smoking and use of other psychoactive substances, or incidence of
delinquent behavior. Further factors may be measured to assess the impact of a
life skills programmed, such as the effect of life skills education on school
performance and school attendance.
Multimedia
and social media communication initiatives which seek to promote the status of
girls. In a young female character has been created to model the application of
life skills in different situations. These scenarios are widely disseminated
through popular social media, including animated film, radio drama, story books
and newspaper cartoon strips.
Evaluation
of life skills education should include a combination of quantitative and
qualitative assessment. Qualitative assessment gives an indication of how well
the programmers implemented and received. This is an important aspect of
evaluation, which influences the interpretation of quantitative research findings.
Life skills outside school
Current
knowledge about life skills education internationally is derived primarily from
the school setting. There is a need for greater understanding of the nature of
life skills education for young people who are not attending school, to
identify the best strategies for supporting effective life skills initiatives
to reach out-of-school children and adolescents. There was a consensus among
participants that the development of life skills initiatives out of school
requires special attention from United Nations agencies.
Different
types of life skills intervention to reach out-of-school children and
adolescents need to identify. This involves the modelling of life skills using
methods such as, social media, video films, puppet shows and cartoons in
magazines, newspapers and on television. Such initiatives can be coupled with
support materials to introduce discussion about the scenarios presented. The
support materials can be developed for implementation by peer or other educators
in settings such as youth clubs.
Short
courses of life skills training can be carried out with children and
adolescents who participate in sports and recreational clubs. Life skills
training workshops can also be integrated into existing courses offering
training in livelihood or vocational skills. Life skills for vulnerable
children and adolescents. There is a need for life skills interventions to
reach vulnerable children such as street children, sexually exploited and
working children, and orphans.
Little
is known about life skills interventions with vulnerable young people, although
there are many indications that life skills play an important role in
determining which children cope in difficult circumstances. These days, excess
use of mobile and social media is damaging life skills.
One
suggestion made during the Meeting was to start from what the children are
interested in and experiencing and to use that as a basis for building life
skills sessions with them. However, that would mean a less structured approach,
implying an additional need for well-trained educators.
All
these three approaches to life skills learning are most likely to rely on
short-term interventions. Given the limitations on access to out-of-school
children and adolescents overran extended period, an important consideration in
the development of life skills interventions will be to identify what is the
minimum intervention required to have a positive impact.
Further,
there is a need for inter-agency collaboration to accelerate programming,
monitoring and evaluation for life skills education in and out of schools. It
is suggested collaboration in the design of life skills curricula in schools;
the development of tools for the monitoring and evaluation of life skills
education initiatives; the development of guidelines and training materials to
support life skills initiatives for out-of-school children and adolescents; and
an e-mail network to facilitate exchange of information between agencies.
The
initiatives to develop and implement life skills education in high schools have
been undertaken in many countries around the world. Life skills education is
aimed at facilitating the development of psychosocial skills that are required
to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life. It includes the
application of life skills in the context of specific risk situations and in
situations where children and adolescents need to be empowered to promote and
protect their rights.
Numerous
different life skills programmers identified five basic areas of life skills
that are relevant across cultures. The decision-making and problem-solving;
creative thinking and critical thinking; communication and interpersonal skills
self-awareness and empathy coping with emotions and coping with stress.
There
are many different reasons why these life skills are taught in different
countries. In Zimbabwe and Thailand, the impetus for initiating life skills
education was the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In Mexico, it was the prevention of
adolescent pregnancy. In the United Kingdom, an important life skills
initiative was set up to contribute to child abuse prevention, and in the USA,
there are numerous life skills programmers for the prevention of substance
abuse and violence.
In
South Africa and Colombia an important stimulus for life skills education has
been the desire to create a curriculum for education for life, called “Life
Orientation” education in South Africa and “Integral Education” in Colombia.
There are many initiatives of this nature in which primary prevention
objectives is, life skills education has been developed to promote the positive
socialization of children.
Many
countries are now considering the development of life skills education in
response to the need to reform traditional education systems. That appear to be
out of step with the realities of modern social and economic life. Also,
problems such as violence in schools and student drop-out are crippling the
ability of school systems to achieve their academic goals.
Furthermore,
its wide-ranging applications in primary prevention and the advantages. That it
can bring for education systems, life skills education lays the foundation for
learning skills that are in great demand in today’s job markets.
The
purpose to support the advancement of life skills education. It could be an
opportunity for different organizations to clarify and agree upon a common
conceptual basis for support from the United Nations system to facilitate the development
of life skills education in schools.
It
generates consensus as to the broad definition and objectives of life skills
education and strategies for its implementation. It Need to improve
collaboration between the various agencies working to support life skills
education in high schools. There is a wide range of key issues, summarized as
below.
· The definition of “life
skills”;
· The reasons forteaching life
skills;
· Life skills education in
schools these days.
· Life skills outside schools.
Life
skills education need to strengthen and improve school health. Also promote the
development of long-term and holistic life skills curricula in schools. And
promote democracy, gender equality and peace; prevent health and social
problems including psychoactive substance use, HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancy
and violence.
Dealing
with conflict that cannot be fixed, dealing with authority, solving problems,
making and keeping friends / relationships, cooperation, self-awareness,
creative thinking, decision-making, critical thinking, dealing with stress,
negotiation, clarification of values, resisting pressure, coping with
disappointment, planning, empathy, dealing with emotions, assertiveness, active
listening, respect, tolerance, trust, sharing, sympathy, compassion,
sociability, self-esteem.
Moreover,
it the need of times to cater the issue of adolescents; the importance of
supporting life skills initiatives for children who do not attend school. The
term “life skills” is open to wide interpretation. There should consensus on
using the term to refer to psychosocial skills, personal, social,
interpersonal, cognitive, affective, universal issues to identify life skills.
Make a list of items as what are and what are not life skills.
The
promotion of self-esteem, is clearly an important goal for life skills
education, but is it a skill? For example, self-esteem, sociability, sharing,
compassion, respect and tolerance are all desirable qualities, but, it can be
argued, are not skills. Because skills are abilities. Hence it should be
possible to practice life skills as abilities.
Self-esteem,
sociability and tolerance are not taught as abilities. Rather, learning such
qualities is facilitated by learning and practicing life skills, such as
self-awareness, problem-solving, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.
Another
area of debate for the identification of place of physical or perceptual motor
skills, such as preparing an oral rehydration solution. What are these to be
called? If physical skills are not accurate enough, two suggestions must to
call these “health skills” or “practical skills”.
There
should be clear consensus that livelihood skills such as crafts, money
management and entrepreneurial skills are not life skills. However, the
teaching of livelihood skills can be designed to be complementary to life
skills education, and vice versa. Why teach life skills?
There
should be considered that life skills are indispensable for the promotion of
healthy child and adolescent development primary prevention of some key causes
of child and adolescent death, disease and disability socialization preparing
young people for changing social circumstances.
Life
skills education contributes to basic education gender equality democracy good
citizenship child care and protection quality and efficiency of the education
system the promotion of lifelong learning quality of life the promotion of
peace. The learning of life skills might contribute to the utilization of
appropriate health services by young people.
Areas
of primary prevention for which life skills are considered essential include
adolescent pregnancy HIV/AIDS violence child abuse suicide. The other problems
related to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other psychoactive substances
injuries accidents racism conflict environmental issues.
Also,
its time to prepare a Child-friendly Checklist for Schools to provide a tool
for assessing the social environment of schools. That should be based on the
assessment of school policies and the practices of school staff. Demands of
modern life, poor parenting, changing family structure, dysfunctional
relationships, impacting of social media, new understanding of young people’s
needs, decline of religion, rapid sociocultural change. The following reasons
why life skills are essential for primary prevention listed in the state of the
art in life skills education in schools.
It is
the right time to emphasized on life skills education. Which is already
happening, and that it is possible for United Nations agencies to speed up its
development at country level. Many teachers are already engaging in activities
related to the development of life skills but need support to create effective
approaches to life skills education for health promotion and primary
prevention.
Life
skills are generic skills, relevant to numerous diverse experiences throughout
life. They should be taught as such, to gain maximum impact from life skills
lessons. Though, for an effective contribution to any domain of prevention,
life skills should also be applied in the context of typical risk situations.
Facilitating
the learning of life skills is a central component to promote healthy behavior
and mental well-being. To be effective, the teaching of life skills is coupled
with the teaching of health information and the promotion of positive (health
promoting and pro-social) attitudes and values.
The
development of life skills requires modelling of life skills by school staff
and a “safe”, supportive classroom environment, that is conducive to the
practice and reinforcement of skills. Furthermore, life skills education needs
to be developed as part of a whole school initiative designed to support the
healthy psychosocial development of children and adolescents, for example,
through the promotion of child-friendly practices in schools.
To be
effective, life skills lessons should be designed to achieve clearly stated
learning objectives for each activity. Life skills learning is facilitated
using participatory learning methods and is based on a social learning process
which includes: hearing an explanation of the skill in question; observation of
the skill (modelling); practice of the skill in selected situations in a
supportive learning environment; and feedback about individual performance of
skills.
Practice
of skills is facilitated by role-playing in typical scenarios, with a focus on
the application of skills and the effect that they have on the outcome of a
hypothetical situation. Skills learning is also facilitated by using skills
learning “tools”, e.g. by working through steps in the decision- making
process.
Life
skills education should be designed to enable children and adolescents to
practice skills in progressively more demanding situations for example, by
starting with skills learning in non-threatening, low-risk everyday situations
and progressively moving on to the application of skills in threatening,
high-risk situations.
Other
important methods used to facilitate life skills learning include group work,
discussion, debate, story-telling, peer-supported learning and practical
community development projects. Practical advice offered during the Meeting
included: be humorous and make it relevant!
Life
skills learning cannot be facilitated based on information or discussion alone.
Moreover, it is not only an active learning process, it must also include
experiential learning, i.e. practical experience and reinforcement of the
skills for each student in a supportive learning environment.
The
introduction of life skills education requires teacher training to promote
effective implementation of the programmed. This can be provided as in-service
training, but efforts should also be made to introduce it in teacher training
colleges. The successful implementation of a life skills programmed depends on:
the development of training materials for teacher trainers; a teaching manual,
to provide lesson plans and a framework for a sequential, developmentally appropriate
programmed; teacher training and continuing support in the use of the
programmed materials.
The
scope of life skills education varies with the capacity of education systems.
Although programmers can begin on a small scale and for a targeted age group,
as a longer-term goal life skills education should be developed so that it
continues throughout the school years –from school entry until school leaving
age. Life skills education can be designed to be spread across the curriculum,
to be a separate subject, to be integrated into an existing subject, or a mix
of all of these.
The
development of life skills education is a dynamic and evolving process, which
should involve children, parents and the local community in making decisions
about the content of the programmed. Once a programmed has been developed,
there needs to be scope for local adaptation over time and in different
contexts.
In the
short term after three to six months of implementation, the effectiveness of a
life skills must be measured in terms of the specific learning objectives of
the life skills lessons. The other factors such as changes in self-esteem,
perceptions of self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions.
Only in
the longer term after at least a year is feasible to evaluate life skills
education in terms of the prevention of health-damaging and antisocial
behavior. Smoking and use of other psychoactive substances, or incidence of
delinquent behavior. Further factors may be measured to assess the impact of a
life skills programmed, such as the effect of life skills education on school
performance and school attendance.
Multimedia
and social media communication initiatives which seek to promote the status of
girls. In a young female character has been created to model the application of
life skills in different situations. These scenarios are widely disseminated
through popular social media, including animated film, radio drama, story books
and newspaper cartoon strips.
Evaluation
of life skills education should include a combination of quantitative and
qualitative assessment. Qualitative assessment gives an indication of how well
the programmers implemented and received. This is an important aspect of
evaluation, which influences the interpretation of quantitative research findings.
Life skills outside school
Current
knowledge about life skills education internationally is derived primarily from
the school setting. There is a need for greater understanding of the nature of
life skills education for young people who are not attending school, to
identify the best strategies for supporting effective life skills initiatives
to reach out-of-school children and adolescents. There was a consensus among
participants that the development of life skills initiatives out of school
requires special attention from United Nations agencies.
Different
types of life skills intervention to reach out-of-school children and
adolescents need to identify. This involves the modelling of life skills using
methods such as, social media, video films, puppet shows and cartoons in
magazines, newspapers and on television. Such initiatives can be coupled with
support materials to introduce discussion about the scenarios presented. The
support materials can be developed for implementation by peer or other educators
in settings such as youth clubs.
Short
courses of life skills training can be carried out with children and
adolescents who participate in sports and recreational clubs. Life skills
training workshops can also be integrated into existing courses offering
training in livelihood or vocational skills. Life skills for vulnerable
children and adolescents. There is a need for life skills interventions to
reach vulnerable children such as street children, sexually exploited and
working children, and orphans.
Little
is known about life skills interventions with vulnerable young people, although
there are many indications that life skills play an important role in
determining which children cope in difficult circumstances. These days, excess
use of mobile and social media is damaging life skills.
One
suggestion made during the Meeting was to start from what the children are
interested in and experiencing and to use that as a basis for building life
skills sessions with them. However, that would mean a less structured approach,
implying an additional need for well-trained educators.
All
these three approaches to life skills learning are most likely to rely on
short-term interventions. Given the limitations on access to out-of-school
children and adolescents overran extended period, an important consideration in
the development of life skills interventions will be to identify what is the
minimum intervention required to have a positive impact.
Further,
there is a need for inter-agency collaboration to accelerate programming,
monitoring and evaluation for life skills education in and out of schools. It
is suggested collaboration in the design of life skills curricula in schools;
the development of tools for the monitoring and evaluation of life skills
education initiatives; the development of guidelines and training materials to
support life skills initiatives for out-of-school children and adolescents; and
an e-mail network to facilitate exchange of information between agencies.
Life Skills High School[/caption]
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