Online Course on Developing Life Skills
ONLINE COURSE ON
DEVELOPING LIFE SKILLS
MODULE NO. 3
EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE
CONCEPT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION
EMMRC Calicut
University of Calicut
CREDITS
Core Team Module Contributor
Prof. (Dr.) Mohamedunni Alias Musthafa Ms. Camilla Diana
Professor, Assistant Professor
Department of Education, Department of English
Director IQAC Union Christian College, Aluva
Central University of Kerala
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF
LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION
OBJECTIVES
In this module we are going to discuss a very significant and a thought provoking topic that is
“Evolution and Development of the Concept of Life Skills Education”
The main objectives of this module are
1) To get to know about the concept of Life skill
2) To know in detail about the Evolution and growth of Life skill Education
3) To understand the importance of life skill education
4) To know about the role of Life Skill education in the global scenario
5) To understand about the future of Life skill education.
Before we start the session on Life Skill Education we will just recall about
the concept of Life Skill. You might be familiar with the concept but to prepare a
platform for the learning we will just have a discussion on the basic idea of life skill.
As you all know, Life Skill means any skill that we imbibe in order to live our life to
its fullest. According to United Nations Children’s Fund Life Skill Education refers to
“a behavioural change or behavioural development designed to address the balance of
three areas- Knowledge, attitude and skills”. Now we will just check what we mean
by life skill education. We need to understand the fact that the world is growing fast.
Communication and technology is also growing in a much faster pace and we need to
consider one thing in this fast moving world, that is, we should be equipped with
certain life skills in order to cope with this situation. And life skills can be consciously
learned. Majority of the life skills like decision making, problem solving, and good
communication etc can be acquired through training. When talking about Global
Evaluation of Life Skills Education Programmes –we need to understand that
“UNICEF has taken a major role in supporting the introduction of Life Skill education
both with in country initiatives and globally by producing guidance and Standard
documents”
Life skill education trains a person to be a healthy being in the society. It trains
a person to be mentally strong by facing and accepting all the challenges in life.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
Itsupports a person to face the realities of life and it helps to have a positive outlook
towards every aspect in human life. It trains a person to adjust with others, it moulds
him to adjust with life situation and to face the realities of life. Above all life skill
education helps a person to understand his worth and dignity.
We will just make a quick view of the Importance of Life Skill Education
1) It is beneficial to the Society- when we impart healthy life skill to an individual it
inturn benefits the society –we may think how it is possible? When he learns life
skills he develops social skills, various positive attitudes,good values and morals
which in turn is beneficial to society.
2) It benefits the Individual- Life skill gives many advantages to the person because it
improves his knowledge, competence, communication, employability skills etc.
3) It helps in Nation building- when an individual grows, he in turn contributes to the
nation building process
4) It helps in building a healthy body- Life skill focus on building a healthy body
because it also imparts the knowledge related to the psychological health, knowledge
regarding how to prevent diseases, or the prevention of drug abuse which all results in
developing a healthy life skill.
Various strategies are opted to impart life skill education. We will just look into
those strategies in brief.
Brain Storming- You may be familiar with this strategy and many of you might have
practised it. While practicing brain storming students gets an opportunity to think
outside the box. They practice to deliver ideas quickly which in turn helps them to
bring up with different ideas in different life situations and thus equip them to develop
problem solving skills.
Group Discussions- as you all know while being part of a group discussion a person
gets a chance to deliver his ideas constructively and at the same time he gets a chance
to listen to others. In such a situation a person develops interpersonal skills and learn a
lot to control ones emotion especially the emotion of anger.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
Case study –Case study always benefits a person to view the world in wider
perspective. A case study benefits to grasp a situation from its every angle. It helps to
analyse the situations in detail and helps to come up with possible solutions. While
engaging in case study learner will able to imbibe many life skills such as viewing
things from others view point, imbibing problem solving skills, gets a wider view of
life etc.
Games- We all love to be a part of games, don’t we? Games are most interesting and
entertaining medium to learn any skills. While engaged in games the learners will get
more into the realm of communication skills, it helps him to learn inter personal skill,
it helps him to face various real life situation thus supports him to improve problem
solving skills
Role play-Role play is much innovative strategy where a person enacts a particular
role. As we discussed in the other strategies this strategy also helps him to understand
the perspectives of others and will get an opportunity to deal with various situations.
Story Telling-Story Telling is not just aboutstorytelling and it’s not as simple as we
think. Through story telling we are able to learn many skills including listening skill,
moral values and also develops courage to face a small crowd if we are narrating the
story. It also helps to communicate values through stories. Above all hearing stories
improves ones imagination and it also encourages the person to develop reading
habits which is one of the important life style skill.
Infusion- One of the recent strategy is infusion. In this technique along with
imparting the knowledge subjects like science, Maths or language subjects,the learner
also learns how to use the knowledge to his daily life(Smith et al 2004)
So life skill education is really important because it deals with the areas like
interpersonal skills, self-reflection, problem solving, decision making. We will now
try to trace the evolution of life skill education. It will be a very apt step to know how
this life skill gained major importance in the society and how the society began to feel
the significance of life skill education, how society began to accept this idea. Life skill
education has many social, emotional, cultural and political benefits.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
You might have heard about Jack Ma. Tell me where you have heard about
him? The importance of the idea can be seen in such a height that Jack Ma, the
chairman of Alibaba group stressed the importance of Soft skill education and Life
skill education for success in Jobs.
Evolution and Development of Life Skill Education
First we should think why does the concept of various skills get recognition?
In the beginning, education was purely based on knowledge. It was just focusing on
imparting of facts and knowledge to the learner. But later the society began to
understand the importance of different skills and began to focus on those areas. World
began to understand that beyond knowledge there are certain things that should be
given priority. Life skill education was focusing on psycho social realms along with
the aspect of departing the traditional knowledge.
As we all know growth of a nation depends on the growth of its citizens. A
good citizen can be moulded only through good education. Traditionally imparting
education just meant imparting knowledge so the educationalist began to give much
importance to the knowledge part of the system- knowledge in the sense they began to
focus on science and arithmetic. But as science and other branches developed further
they also began to focus on the psycho social facts of a human being. Later
educationalist began to know that any education is life based education. With the
advent of science and medicine the society began to recognise about the adolescent
health and adolescent psychology. Thus the concept of life skill became part of the
education.
Life skill education was considered with much importance from the time of
Post Renaissance. The writers like Jane Austin, Shakespeare were all aware that good
skills are needed in order to survive and flourish in the society. Thus when we read
Jane Austin’s novel we can see that the central theme will be regarding manners
which itself is one of the most important Life Skill. During that time education and
Good Manners began to be considered as one key aspect of Social Mobility. But later
during the time of Industrialisation people began to focus on money and labour which
turned their attention from Life skill. Thus during Industrialization there is no much
position for the concept of Life skill education. But in the new millennium much
prominence is given to the concept as the cultural and tradition of the people began to
get more sensitive due to globalization.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
Life skill based education can be traced all the way back to 1986. Ottawa
charter focused on life skill eventhough the charter had a focus on the health and the
better healthy lifestyles. The next step in life skill education happened in the year
1989 -Convention on the rights of the child. In this the main focus was on the fullest
potential expansion of the child.1990 Jomtein Declaration focused on much broader
level that is they took the vision of‘Education for all’. In this level they were actually
having much broader and wider perspective regarding life skill. Dakar World
Education council that happened in 2000 in Senegal had a vision of imparting
education to all by 2015.
Life skill education later began to focus on solely imparting education on
various life skill so that human beings can live a harmonious life with the nature.
Later they began to address various issues like health.
UNGASS(United Nations General Assembly Special Session) that was
organised in the year 2001 was actually focussing on the issue of health which in
particular focused on HIV AIDS. World Program of Human Rights Education which
was organised in the year 2004 was to enlarge the concept of Life Skill Education to
all levels and all sectors. The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development aimed at reorienting the arenas of development. DESD aimed at
education so that it will in turn helps to develop a more sustainable future. DESD was
having one view in mind that Education alone cannot help the world to grow but need
a collaborative effort from all realms like agriculture, industries, information
technology etc. Violence Against Children –by UN Secretary Generals Study, 51
commission on the Status of Women(2007), The World development report organized
in 2007 are other major steps in the growth of Life skill education and it also shows
how various aspects of life were gaining position and gaining Global attention.
In 1989 United Nations in convention on the Rights of the Child also focuses
on the concept of Life skill education. Jomtein Declaration on Education in 1990 also
declares that LifeSkill Education is really important in today’s scenario. Dakar World
Education Conference in 2000 also focussed on the same.
Life skill Education is a word which is interpreted differently in different part of
the world but it is also much debated topic in today’s society. It should be noted that
Dr. Krishna Kumar drafted a document in 2005 as part of National Curriculum frame
work. In the document he emphasised the importance of life skill education in schools
as part of Curriculum. He notes
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
“Development of Life skills such as critical thinking and coping and self-
management skills …is very critical for dealing for the demands and challenges of
everyday life”
It has been seen that adolescence age is one category where much attention and
guidance is needed and it has been an area of attention around the globe. Countries
like US, UK, Germany, Mexico focus Life skill education as a medium to prevent
HIV, Drug Abuse, smoking, Drinking etc. But Life Skill training may change in the
case of developing countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, will focus on improving
communication skill, focuses on Gender Roles, Basil Health care etc. Whatever the
focus may be the final goal of Life Skill education is to develop Positive outlook
towards life.
Even world have reached to such a perspective that the life skill education is
more importantthan the traditional concept of formal academic education.
Life skill Education in India
There are many organizations that worked for the blooming of life skill
education in India. NIMHANS or the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro
sciences focussed on the community health care where it began to give importance on
lifeskill education. NCERT,HRD Ministry and NACO had engaged on the adolescent
health as a primary area to control AIDS. In India, the education of a child is focussed
on the development of his personality. NCF –The National Curriculum Framework is
published by NCERT - When they designed the text books they actually directedtheir
attention on lifeskill education. In 2005 CBSE introduced life skill as a part of
Curriculum.
I) National Curriculum Framework (NCF) is published by NCERT. In this they
proposes a framework how to disseminate lifeskill knowledge to the students.
The following are the certain areas they took into consideration while
focussing life skill education. In the report titled ‘Mapping Life skills in India:
Research, Policy and Practice’, they proposes the fruits of Life skills education
as follows.
1) Education for Peace
Education for peace tries to inculcate the value of peace in the regular teaching
learning process. Apart from instilling knowledge this concept focuses on
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
moulding of individual to understand the value of peace. Here NCERT emphasis
on the role of teachers.
2) Health and Physical Education
NCF also acknowledges the fact that Health and Physical education also plays a
vital role in the life skill education. NCF understands the fact that focusing on
Health and Physical education actually builds a healthy nation.
3) Adolescence Education Programme
Adolescence Education Programme is defined as “important initiative that aims to
empower young people with accurate, age appropriate and culturally relevant
information, promote healthy attitudes and develop skills to enable them to
respond to real life situations in positive and responsible ways. National Council
of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) co-ordinates the program and
works through both curricular and co-curricular formats to contribute toward
holistic development of young people in pursuance of the National Curriculum
Framework”. It thus focus on age appropriate education and developing
appropriate life skills.
II) Government Sponsored Teacher Training Programme
1) YUVA school Life Skill Program
This Program is focussed in Delhi. Here the project direct its attention on teachers
and students to train them to use the fullest potential
2) Public Private Teacher Training
This venture believes in giving teacher training for imparting Life Skills. It was a
project that was launched in 2012.
3) Tool Kits
Tool Kits refers to various curricular recommendations putforward by the authorities.
In the case of NCERT they have formed a teacher suggestion packet in 2016 while
CBSE formulated teacher manual on Life skills.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
SSA project- Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan project by the Indian Government also
emphasised the importance of Life skill education as an important part of the
curriculum especially focussing on the upper primary level [Link] Association
of Life Skill Education or IALSE is a best example to show how the country has
started accepting the idea of Life skill education. IALSE is a society registered under
Tamil Nadu Registration act. This is one active group which is actually working on
the promotion of Life Skill throughout India. InIndia Life Skill Education also
flourished as a part of Rajeev Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in
2008. They focussed on training the trainers to inculcate life skill in learners. This
association provides a platform for all the societies which focus on life skill education
to interact each other for the development of the individual, which in turn helps in
Nation building. IALSE also focus on the teachers, educators, professors, NGO’s – in
short they focus on all the arenas of society.
Future of Life Skill Education
Life Skill education believes in the fullest blooming of the potential of human
being. Life Skill education focus on Health benefits, educational benefits, economic
benefits. Thus the world is concerned more and more about the importance of Life
skill education and emphasis more on skill development side of a human being which
in turn helps in the development of a nation. Thus it is sure that in future there is a
vast possibility of life skills to be part of curriculum and policy building process of
nations.
Conclusion
So dear learners we discussed about the concept of Life skill. Then we saw in detail
the idea of life skill education, its importance and various strategies to impart life
skill. Then we debated on how life skill education evolved in the world and how it
advanced and flourished. Apart from all this we also saw the position of life skill
education in India and we concluded the topic by discussing about the future of life
skill education in the global scenario.
So Hope you all understood and enjoyed the session. We will meet in the next class.
Thank you dear learners.
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