What is Life Skills Education & why it is Important?

The development of a child can be made possible by keeping all aspects of their personality in mind. This is the reason why Life Skill Education plays an important part in everyone’s life. In life skills education, the overall personality of a child is taken into consideration. It gives strength to handle any kind of situation and gives the courage to face struggle to achieve any target. By adding life skills for students to the school curriculum, better results can be achieved.

Here is the explanation of what is a life skill.

A life skill is used to describe basic skills acquired through learning or knowledge. Also, the daily routine can be said to be a life skill. Life skills also can include the ability of your emotions, finances, school performance, health, etc. If you are practicing life skills, so can improve a child’s esteem, social competence, and confidence. You are increasing the life skills in your life.

Now, the exact life skills meaning is when the group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make decisions, build healthy, solve problems, communicate effectively, and think critically and creatively. Maybe life skills are directed towards personal actions or actions towards others.

Hence, the representation of what is a life skill. And life skills meaning.

What are Life Skills?

There are many definitions to understand what life skills are.

A person needs a set of social features and personal capabilities to interact with themselves and other people in and around their environment and make a decision that requires high ability, also to find solutions to various kinds of problems.

Moreover, the skills required to deal positively with any condition to get the desired outcome is called life skills. Life skills can be developed through encouragement to adapt to society and promote positivity in personal behaviors and adopt a positive perspective toward work.

What is Life Skill Education Meaning?

Life skills education is one such type of skill. Under this, the child develops the ability to discharge his life appropriately and to organize the activities related to life in a systematic manner. It is a type of education in which skills are developed to make the child efficient in such a way that he can make decisions in odd situations by his ability and intelligence.

At the same time, such miseries have to be developed in human life. So that he can become a skilled citizen.

Importance of Life Skills Education

If we want to live life successfully, then we need to understand the importance of life skills. And it is also very important to implement it in our life. If this happens then our life can move in a simple and right direction. Life skills make us competent to know how to make our life easy and simple, how to create a positive life, and how life can be spent in the right way. Therefore, life skills are very important in our life.

It polishes the ability to adapt to all kinds of circumstances and succeed in every aspect of society. Lack of life skills in the lives of new generations needs to be taken care of as it is important in life. Due to the absence of life skills, not only personal lives but professional lives and careers get affected.

By educating life skills, students can develop self-confidence in them. It makes them cooperative and communicative. It prepares them to take quick action in any unfavorable circumstances.

Types of Life Skills

There are two types of life skills that need to be taught to students. The first one is General Life Skills and the other is High-Level skills. And under these skills comes a variety of skills which are the following.

General skills

Confidence skills.

Decision-making skills.

Stress alleviation skills.

Adjustment skills in adversity.

Self-awareness skills.

The skill of negative tendency towards wrongdoing.

Positive behavior.

Critical Thinking.

Society’s skills towards each other.

High-level skills

The following skills are covered under High-Level Skills.

Excellent warmth and high mental level.

Way of thinking.

Mental and physical relaxation.

Goal Setting and Problem Solving.

Communication.

Social support.

Standard of living with health.

Aims of Development of Life Skills

Following are the objectives for the development of life skills.

The purpose of social development.

Development of experimental knowledge.

The purpose of the development of adjustment power.

The objective of develops life values.

The objective of mental development.

Of all-round development

Who Created the Basic Life Skills Curriculum?

The curriculum for life skills education in schools was created by UNICEF in close collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sport of Azerbaijan to give youth new knowledge and a valuable chance to apply novel skills in a protected environment for the effective transition to adulthood.

What Are Basic Life Skills Education For?

Objective

Youthful generations foster perspectives and convictions positively so that they contribute to Azerbaijani society and make progress as they transition to adulthood and the work world.

Target Audience

The life skills lesson bundle is intended to apply to the youthful generation aged 10 to 24 years of age who come to Youth Houses aiming to create a healthy condition to support and promote the advancement of youth initiatives.

Anticipated result

Through life skills for students, youthful generations are outfitted with foundational skills essential for transitioning to useful adulthood; overseeing stress; learning to deal with difficult emotions; practicing positivism; improving confidence; feeling sympathy; learning to listen to others carefully; and learning to set personal limits.

Moreover, they learn to handle disputes well; find a balance between needs also, requests; impart confidently; put forth objectives; make decisions; solve problems; think basically and imaginatively; utilize chief functional skills; and learn to return from difficulty.

Imparting ‘Life Skills Education’ In the Classroom

Classroom Discussions

An activity provides amazing open doors for students to learn and work on turning to one another in solving problems. Empower students to develop their understanding of the topic and personalize their connection to it. Creates skills, in listening, decisiveness, and sympathy.

Brainstorming

It permits students to produce ideas rapidly and spontaneously. Assists students with using their imagination furthermore, thinking out of the container. Great discussion starter because the class can imaginatively create ideas. It is fundamental to assess the upsides and downsides of each idea or rank ideas according to certain standards.

Role Plays

Along with being a fun activity and involving the entire class, to be active and participative, it also gives a fantastic strategy for practicing skills; experiencing how one could handle a likely situation in real life; increasing sympathy for others and their point of view, and increasing insight into their feelings.

Groups

Groups are useful when the time is restricted as it boosts student input. Permits student interactions, and permits them to, know, one another better which in a way improves group building and cooperation.

Educational Games and Simulations

They advance fun, active learning, and rich discussion as members work hard to make their statements or procure points. They require the combined utilization of knowledge, perspectives, and skills and permit students to test out assumptions and capacities in a somewhat protected environment.

Analysis of Situation and Case Studies

It allows an opportunity, to examine, and investigate, challenges, and problems and securely test solutions; providing open doors for working together in groups, sharing ideas, and new learnings and giving insight furthermore, elevates sometimes us to see things differently.

Case studies resemble strong impetuses for thought and discussion. Engaging in this thinking system; students improve their own, decisive thinking, and decision-making skills. It also gives a chance to confront risks or any challenges and find ways of coping with them.

Progress of Basic Life Skills Curriculum for Youth

Because of effective testing through the two pilot Youth Houses – in Baku-Binagadi and Mingachevir, the UNICEF-created Basic Life Skills program was extended to one more Youth House supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, as well as three Career Places supported by the Youth Foundation.

In equal, negotiations are held with the Ministry of Education concerning the conceivable inclusion of the BLS program into the formal education curriculum.

DISCUSSION and CONCLUSION

An important and legitimate implementation of life skill education is a need of 60 minutes, for today’s society.

Imparting life skills education to the students can be useful as it specifically addresses the needs of children, and helps in motivating, and providing practical, mental, emotional, social and self-management skills for life changes.

Yadav P and Iqbal N (2009) showed positive aftereffects of imparting life skills education to students and bringing change in young adults’ mentality, thought and conduct by providing a supportive environment for them.

According to Errecart et al., (1991) and Caplan et al., (1992), life skills education ends up being a successful methodology in essential prevention education, as it is more interactive, utilizes a problem problem-solving approach and is exercise-based.

Hence, the teacher and the educated are both involved in learning and fun too.

All in all, life skills education has been viewed as a compelling psychosocial intervention strategy for promoting positive social, and psychological wellness of youths which plays a significant role in all perspectives like strengthening coping techniques and developing fearlessness and emotional intelligence, as well as enhancing decisive thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills as have been proven and factual in the aforementioned studies.

Thus, there is, significance and significance for life skills education to integrate into the standard school curriculum by a life skills trainer/teacher/guide to improve the psychological wellness of students, outfit them with better-adjusted skills to confront the challenges of changing life situations and enable them to turn out to be completely functioning contributors to the host society and the world overall.

In the illumination of the above discussion, it very well may be concluded, that, Life skill education has its significance and significance in by and large advancement of students. Our findings are in common with the findings of Botvin, et al., (1998), Nair. M.K.C, (2005) some more, suggesting life skill education programs as a decent supportive system for young people.

Future Implications

Although considerable progress has been made in the previous ten years and the current study too, life skills education is a powerful method of education, which upgrades social, emotional and thinking skills, and helps 21st-century youths accomplish their objectives.

It does so by strengthening their capacities to meet the needs and requests of the current society and find true success in life, but even more exact research is crucial for future researchers, academicians and professionals in the connected field to demonstrate hearty findings.

Essential Life Skills Everyone Should Learn

Developing life skills is important and every life skill has its importance to apply in life. Following are life skills:

Self-Awareness Skills

By developing the Self-awareness skill, one can be aware of his/her doings. They will be aware of their own performance and their behaviors which will make them competent to handle any situation. A person will get to know his feelings for things or towards other people. It also helps them to make sound decisions.

Empathy and Sympathy Skills

With Empathy, a person will be able to understand other people’s perceptions, feelings, and circumstances any person is in. It simply puts them in someone’s place to understand their actual emotions. It helps them to react accordingly.

With sympathy, a person will be able to show appreciation and compassion towards other people and their emotional reactions.

Problem-Solving Skills

The life skill of problem-solving makes an individual trace a problem, suggest options to solutions, evaluate the solutions to pick the best solution, and then apply the solution to the problem within the time limit. It is one of the most important life skills to practice in life on an everyday basis.

Decision-Making Skills

Every now and then, an individual has to face times when they have to make a decision that can affect their life. With decision-making skills, a person develops the skill to make the right and appropriate decision and pass it on. Decision-making enables them to take decisions in any hard and fast situation.

Thinking Skills

Developing thinking skill is very important as it is the mental activity by which an individual can process information, use experiences, make relationships, finalize solutions to problems, pass on decisions, ask questions, and suggest new ideas.

Thinking skills are of four types:

Analytical Thinking Skills: It is a visual thinking skill that makes an individual competent to break complex problems into manageable components to solve them effectively.

Divergent Thinking Skills: With Divergent thinking skills, one can generate creative ideas after working on or exploring many possible solutions. It is spontaneous and free-flow thinking.

Creative Thinking Skills: Creative thinking skill helps a person to create something new. It also allows their brain to explore things and look at things in creative ways to suggest creative solutions. Creative thinking is infused with imagination, and it does not involve logical reasoning.

Critical Thinking Skills: Critical thinking skill is the opposite of creative thinking skill. It is the ability to make a difference between fake truth and real truth, judgment, and opinion. It prepares a person to think rationally and prepare to build trust in right and avoid wrong.

Communication skills

Without proper communication, you cannot express and make people understand your thinking and it can be made possible by developing communication skills. It helps them to convey to people in a very convincing and clear way. It develops confidence in people as well and good communication skills help them in the professional environment too.

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills are basically interaction skills and social skills. This skill prepares an individual to communicate socially in person or in a group. These skills have traits such as self-confidence, critical thinking, communication skills, active listening, leadership, etc. To develop interpersonal skills, one needs to start their day with an optimistic approach towards the day.

Accepting Criticism Skill

Accepting criticism is not easy but by developing this particular skill, one will be able to be open to constructive criticism and improve themselves according to that criticism. An individual should keep their emotional side and accept the truth to work on it.

Students have to understand that not only studies will give them success, but they will also have to develop their skills.

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