what is life skills based education

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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.

Table of Contents

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?

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.

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 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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The Importance of Life Skills-Based Education & Why Schools Should Teach Life Skills

In an ever-growing technology and data driven world, much of the focus in education has understandably taken a shift toward STEM-based (science, technology, engineering, and math) initiatives that will prepare students for the coursework and careers of the future . But life skills—how well equipped students are to make good decisions and solve problems in their academic and professional careers as well as their personal lives—should also play a critical role in a well-rounded and comprehensive education.

What Is Life Skills-Based Education?

Think of life skills as the building blocks or framework that allow students to apply the knowledge they acquire in school to real world problems and situations. Also referred to as “ soft skills ” in a professional context, the ability to think abstractly and approach problems from multiple angles to find practical solutions, and the skill to communicate clearly and effectively are just as important as technical knowledge in a particular field or academic subject.

According to Macmillan Education , “In a constantly changing environment, having life skills is an essential part of being able to meet the challenges of everyday life. The dramatic changes in global economies over the past five years have been matched with the transformation in technology and these are all impacting on education, the workplace, and our home life.”

But life skills go well beyond choosing a major in college or impressing a potential employer in the future. Life skills provide children with important tools for development, such as independent thinking, how to socialize and make new friends, and how to take action in situations where their parents or teachers may not be around to help or intervene ( dealing with a bully or personal insecurities and fears, for example.) Unlike motor skills and basic intelligence, executive function and decision-making skills are not innate but learned .

Examples of life skills include :

• Self reflection
• Critical thinking
• Problem solving
• Interpersonal skills

The Benefits of Teaching Life Skills at a Young Age

Building life skills is essentially an exercise in helping children develop sound judgment and good habits for long-term stability, wellness, and success.

How to Promote Life Skills for Young Students

Parents can take an active role in teaching life-skills at home with projects that provide real world examples and lessons in decision making and problem solving. They can be as simple as assigning household chores and budgeting exercises through an allowance, to caring for a pet or volunteering in the community.

Fun and simple-to-organize activities, like game nights (or afternoons) with family and friends with an educational focus that also encourage working in teams, can help to build social and interpersonal skills.

Everyday Survival Skills

In addition to brushing their own teeth and learning how to tie their shoes and get dressed, young children should know what to do in common situations as well as emergencies , such as:

• How to get to and from home and school
• Who to call in an emergency (memorize phone numbers)
• How to safely cross the street
• What to do if they are bullied or witness bullying
• How to safely use kitchen appliances and prepare basic meals
• How to do the laundry

The Importance of Books and Reading

The benefits of reading to young children and fostering a reading habit early in a child’s life are hard to overstate. From building and strengthening vocabulary and language skills to aiding with creative thinking, reading is one of the easiest and best activities available to teach children a range of new skills. Some of the many benefits of reading include:

• Builds self-regulation (also known as executive function)
• Teaches empathy
• Improves concentration
• Exposes children to diversity and differing perspectives and situations than their own

The acquisition of problem-solving and reasoning abilities is a fluid and ongoing process, and working with children early in their development to lay the framework with examples that they can understand and apply on their own is a good place to start.

If you would like your child’s education to include more life skills, consider enrolling them in a public school at home via online learning . As your child’s Learning Coach you can ensure a well-rounded education that you can supplement with plenty of real world skills!

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The Importance of Life Skills Based Education

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Education is more than academics. Learning goes beyond the four-walls of the classroom. Throughout your life, your skill set as well as your intelligence will have a lot to do in determining your success.  With this in mind, life skills are also important in education, and this statement holds true even when learning science subjects, such as chemistry.

Learning chemistry, at any level, requires life skills , critical thinking skills , and awareness , among other skills. This approach to learning is not only important when learning chemistry, but also when contributing to society in return.

A simple approach to learning chemistry is through observation and rationalization. Since chemistry is an example of an empirical science, it can be explained through observations, like observing how water changes from a liquid state to frozen state. From here, we can proceed to rationalization, explaining how this came to be. This approach can be used from the simplest concepts to the most complex ones.

However, you need a lot of resources to learn chemistry. The resources required range from books, study materials, and online sources. The advantage of living in the age of technology is that you have easy access to many materials. You can find electronic versions of chemistry textbooks, books, and research papers. By simply searching in Google, you can quickly find chemistry research articles that you may find helpful.

In finding material, it’s important that you focus first on the topics covered in your class. Stick to your chemistry level first. Once you have mastered it, it’s time to expand into other areas which are not covered in your class discussion or have not been thoroughly discussed.

Aside from reading these materials, it’s important to test your knowledge along the way. One way of doing this is by taking a practical online chemistry test . There are plenty of tests out there which will help you gauge your knowledge and assess what you have learned and what you still need to work on.

Taking a practical chemistry test online can help you do well in your classroom’s standardized chemistry exams. This practice will also allow you to get used to taking exams, helping you gain confidence and be fully prepared for the actual exam. In addition, you should also try solving chemistry problems and practice as much as you can.

Here are the skills you need in order to learn chemistry effectively:

1. An understanding of the foundations of chemistry

While chemistry is a scientific field in itself, it includes several subfields which are interrelated with each other. This means that in order to learn chemistry as a whole, students must have a foundational knowledge of the many subfields, namely: organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, physical chemistry, and analytical chemistry.

In studying these subject areas, students must understand each subfields’ theories, applications, and experimental evidence, amongst other areas.

2. Laboratory skills

Chemistry is not just written knowledge, and a large part of studying chemistry happens in the laboratory. Students should therefore develop the laboratory skills required to undertake experiments since, after graduation, chemistry majors may well end up working in a laboratory, whether in an academic, industrial, or commercial setting.

Laboratory skills include hands-on experience with the glassware, laboratory instruments, techniques, and the other specialists equipment found in a laboratory setting. Having the necessary laboratory skills can help you go a long way in learning to design experiments and conducting collaborative investigations. These laboratory findings will need also to be analyzed and conclusions drawn based on the results of the analysis.

3. Well-developed analytical skills

In order to make sense of your findings in the laboratory, you will need well-developed analytical skills. Such skills will allow you to draw reasonable and appropriate conclusions from whatever data and results you have collected at the laboratory.

This is where the importance of formal statistics techniques come in. Such techniques are helpful in assessing the precision, significance, and even the uncertainty of the data. Students must be familiar with both commercial software and sophisticated chemical computation software which are essential for data manipulation and data presentation. 

4. Presenting chemistry through communication skills

Now that you have analyzed the data and have drawn reasonable conclusions from your results, it’s time to communicate these findings to a wider audience. In order to do this well, you will need to have good communication skills . 

There are many written communication formats available for chemists. The ability to communicate your results through formal, written reports is essential, but you should also be able and willing to discuss and communicate chemistry in informal situations. Hence, developing good communication skills in life can prove very helpful within the study of chemistry.

5. Making use of effective research tools

Chemistry knowledge has a lot to do with research and chemistry students are expected to undertake their own independent research projects. Essential research skills include proper referencing and the appropriate use of literature. Students must be well-versed in developing hypotheses , designing a method to test such hypotheses, carrying out the method, and then evaluating the results. These tools will come handy not only in the study of chemistry, but also in the study of other sciences and fields.

Further Reading from Skills You Need

The Skills You Need Guide for Students

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Our eBooks are ideal for students at all stages of education, school, college and university. They are full of easy-to-follow practical information that will help you to learn more effectively and get better grades.

It’s important to study chemistry. However, in order to study chemistry effectively, you must first learn to love the subject, and learn to be curious about things. Chemistry is much part of our daily lives and many of the things happening around us involve chemical reactions of one form or another. Hence, taking a life skills-based approach to studying chemistry will work.

If you think of chemistry as an essential aspect of life, you will learn to fall in love with the subject. Everything around us is chemistry: the food we eat, the air we breathe, the cleaning products we use at home, everything. It’s amazing to learn how a combination of elements can form the myriad of things that we encounter in our daily lives. 

Combining life skills with textbook knowledge will make you an outstanding student of chemistry. You’ll be able to grasp both the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject, and you’ll easily learn concepts, formulas, and theories and apply them in both real life and real-world situations.

Continue to: Learning Styles Online Education and Learning

See also: Study Skills | Time Management Skills Learning Approaches

Life Skills Education

Helping people make responsible and informed choices.

For youth to grow into well-functioning adults, it is essential that they learn key life skills such as critical and creative thinking, decision-making, and effective communication, as well as skills for developing self esteem and healthy relationships, navigating harmful gender norms, and accessing health care. While important for all young people around the world , these skills are particularly critical for adolescents who lack accurate information and guidance for making consequential decisions such as becoming sexually active, staying in school, and preventing or responding to abuse. Many children, however, do not have access to education that includes life skills training. 

We layer life skills education onto many of our programs for young people, and deliver these in club-like settings in and out of school, as well as through national school curricula.

We also work with partners, including ministries of education, schools, and nongovernmental organizations, to develop life skills curricula and training approaches and help programs integrate and teach life skills to students in both formal schools and non-formal settings.

Our life skills education approach makes curricula more relevant to the needs of all youth and vulnerable adults, whose grasp of learning content increases dramatically when it is linked directly to their everyday lives. Learners acquire a range of skills to live effectively in society, as well as specific technical and occupational skills including how to set up and run small businesses and use sustainable agriculture methods.

Healthier children stay in school longer, learn more, and as a result, become more productive adults. We are committed to developing and scaling programs that meet the various health needs of children and their families. 

We build on school curricula to inform students about their health and remove barriers to health services. We help ministries of education develop HIV prevention and life skills education curricula. We use schools as entry points to deliver integrated services including primary health care screening and referrals; reproductive health information; nutrition; and psychosocial support .  

The use of clean cooking technology is critical to health. We implement activities in school kitchens to improve staff health and reduce the environmental consequences of traditional wood- and coal-burning stoves. We train students in clean cookstove technology so they can apply what they learn at home, thus improving the environment and the health of their families and communities.

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Life Skills Education for Youth pp 13–41 Cite as

Life Skills Education for Youth in Developing Countries: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?

• Erin Murphy-Graham 13 &
• Alison K. Cohen 14  
• Open Access
• First Online: 24 November 2021

9710 Accesses

4 Citations

Part of the book series: Young People and Learning Processes in School and Everyday Life ((YPLP,volume 5))

Drawing from a review of theoretical, methodological, and empirical literature on life skills from the fields of education, public health, psychology, economics, and international development, this paper attempts to clarify basic definitional and conceptual issues that relate to life skills education. It addresses the questions: (1) What are life skills, and how has the term emerged in academic and donor agency literature? And (2) What bodies of practice and research evidence converge in the rise of ‘life skills’ programming and increased interest in ‘life skills’ among thought leaders and donors in the field of international education? The paper identifies implications from this analysis to be considered in research and interventions that focus on life skills for adolescents, particularly in light of global efforts to improve the quality of education.

You have full access to this open access chapter,  Download chapter PDF

Introduction: Clarifying the Muddy Waters of Life Skills Education

‘Life skills’ is a popular concept in the field of education. One review of the literature on ‘life skills’ education found that there were as many definitions of life skills as there were global education actors and thought leaders (Dupuy & Halvorsen, 2016 ). Non-governmental organizations and international aid agencies such as the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and UNICEF embrace the idea that education should prepare individuals both academically and with ‘skills,’ also referred to as ‘life skills,’ ‘non-cognitive skills,’ ‘character skills’ and/or ‘socio-emotional skills.’ 1 Acquiring ‘skills’ is commonly mentioned as a characteristic of quality education (e.g., Sayed & Ahmed, 2015 ; Sustainable Development Goal Target 4.4; Tikly & Barrett, 2011 ). The meanings and terminologies associated with the concept of life skills vary, and methods for systematically measuring and tracking changes in life skills are not well defined. While life skills might be a catchy phrase, specification of the cognitive, socio-emotional and behavioral learning outcomes is needed, particularly for researchers interested in examining how and if interventions can lead to improvements in people’s lives.

Drawing from a review of theoretical, methodological, and empirical literature on life skills from the fields of education, public health, psychology, economics, and international development, this chapter attempts to clarify basic definitional and conceptual issues that relate to life skills education. It addresses the questions:

What are life skills, and how has the term emerged and changed over time in academic and donor agency literature?

What bodies of practice and research evidence converge in the rise of life skills programming and increased interest in life skills education for youth?

Based on our review of existing research and program/institutional documents, we identify distinct but overlapping discourse communities that use the term ‘life skills’ that have converged in the field of education. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of basic values, assumptions, and goals, and use communication to achieve these goals (Swales, 1990 ). Footnote 1 While there is some overlap in how these discourse communities conceptualize life skills, the goals of each of these are somewhat distinct, and therefore the ways in which they invoke ‘life skills’ varies. These discourse communities include the education community in which we situate ourselves and our concern with the quality of education, particularly in developing country contexts. Two more longstanding discourse communities, which indeed spill into the quality education community, include: (a) scholars and practitioners of public health and social work who are concerned with skills for ‘prevention and protection;’ and (b) economists, who have focused on ‘labor market outcomes’ and draw upon work in the field of psychology. We describe each of these discourse communities in greater detail, as well as the areas of overlap in how they use the term ‘life skills’ in their interventions and publications. After discussing the findings from our examination of ‘life skills’ in the academic and donor agency literature, we conclude by explaining how the capabilities approach to education, which explicitly links education with a social justice perspective and provides a wider set of outcomes from life skills education than offered by any single discourse community, can help inform future work on education and life skills for youth (Robeyns, 2017 ; Tikly & Barrett, 2011 ; Walker, 2012 ).

Skill as the Ability to Do Something Well

Before proceeding, we explain what we mean by ‘skill’ and ‘life skills,’ although there is a great deal of variability in how these concepts are defined in the studies we review below. The terms ‘skill’ and ‘competency’ are commonly collapsed, but in the past the word ‘skill’ referred to the ability to undertake a task in the context of work and the skilled worker was trained (Taylor, 2005 , pp. 201–18). Skill often focused on manual skills that involved both physical psychomotor abilities and mental cognitive abilities (Winterton et al., 2006 ). Very briefly defined, ‘skill’ refers to the ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, and aptitude, to do something well.

The term ‘cognitive skills’ has traditionally been used to refer to processes that occur in the brain to learn to do something well. Cognitive skills are associated with activities such as problem solving, reasoning, thinking, assessing, concluding and include the mental processes of analysis, synthesis and evaluation (Westera, 2011 , p. 77). More recent research has introduced the idea of ‘embodied cognition’ – that the brain is actually part of a broader system that involves perception and action as well (Shapiro, 2007 ). Performing tasks therefore requires a complex synergy between cognitive and bodily functions. Driving is an example that helps explain this synergy:

In skills training, substantial repetition, which allows learners to gradually improve their performance levels in terms of speed, precision and fluency, is usually involved. As a consequence, skills performance becomes more and more automated: experienced drivers, for example, are hardly aware of the complex cognitive tasks they perform, while their inexperienced counterparts must consciously think about almost any operation they carry out (Westera, 2011 , p. 77).

Skills are connected with the accomplishment of specific tasks (driving, solving problems) and repetition is often required to improve performance. A combination of perceptual, cognitive and motor skills is involved in the demonstration of skilled performance. Training programs can provide opportunities to gain the knowledge and practice in specific domains that lead to skill mastery.

If we take the idea that a skill is the ability to do something well, then ‘life skills,’ in its broadest and most simplistic definition is to be able to do life well . But more commonly, it refers to skills that help a person through everyday tasks and to be active and engaged members of a community.

Review and Analysis of Life Skills Education

To better understand how various actors in the field of international development education are engaging with the term ‘life skills,’ in other words to clarify the “muddy waters,” we conducted a review to become acquainted with the organizations and scholars that are doing work related to life skills education. The process used for this analysis included the following core elements.

First, we engaged in a search and analysis of actors and stakeholders working in the field of international development education that are engaged in life skills education. This involved:

Systematic online searches using key words (life skills, non-cognitive skills, skills, adolescent girls) to identify key stakeholders and initiatives in the field at global, regional, and national levels;

A detailed desk review of key global initiatives using websites and other available resources, particularly policy or project documents;

Interviews with key actors in life skills education including researchers, donors, and multi-lateral agencies who convened for a workshop on Life Skills education held at UC Berkeley in May, 2018. Additionally, we have attended panel sessions at international conferences to gain insights into work that has not yet been published or posted on agency websites.

A comprehensive review of published studies to examine the evidence base regarding the impact of life skills education (Murphy-Graham & Cohen, 2019 , included in Table 2.4 ).

This analysis of actors and stakeholders, as well as the empirical literature, allowed us to identify emerging categories that we subsequently labelled “discourse communities.”

Findings: What Are Skills and Why Do They Matter for Education?

Our review and analysis suggest three converging bodies of research and practice that have resulted in the rise of life skills education programming. The first includes work among scholars and practitioners in the field of prevention science, which broadly sees life skills as important for preventing drug and alcohol use, as well as preventing sexually transmitted diseases (particularly HIV), early pregnancy, and other risky behaviors. The second is the discourse community that has been influenced by the work of Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman, who with co-authors, has argued that the predictive power of skills rivals that of cognitive skills, and so interventions should focus on fostering such skills. Life skills are instrumental to ‘promoting lifetime success’ particularly in the labor market (Kautz et al., 2014 ). Heckman and co-authors have drawn upon the Big Five Personality theory in the field of Psychology, a framework for understanding personality traits with five factors: openness, contentiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Finally, a third community focuses on life skills because they see getting youth into school as an insufficient step in transforming lives and communities. Rather, they focus on broadening what is taught in school to ensure education can be useful for life broadly (not just for health or work). Table 2.1 below summarizes these three discourse communities, and each are described in greater detail in the sections that follow.

The three discourse communities have different areas of emphasis for their work in life skills, though there is some overlap. While these three discourse communities conceptualize and have different outcome targets, there is also convergence around the idea that adolescents need to: (1) master certain tasks, knowledge and/or information, (2) develop a group of social and emotional competencies that will lead to valuable behaviors, and; (3) have ways of thinking that we consider to fall within the category of critical thinking . Table 2.2 summarizes these areas of convergence, and each of these discourse communities is described in greater detail in the sections that follow.

At a general level, this common ground across the three discourse communities (mastery of certain tasks/knowledge/information; group of social and emotional competencies; critical thinking/ways of thinking), might help to create a better starting place for identifying common programmatic pedagogies, goals, and assessments. Furthermore, a brief understanding of the historical development and evolution of these discourse communities helps clarify why there is so much variability in the outcomes programs currently emphasize. Understanding this history is a critical step towards improving future work in life skills education.

Life Skills for Prevention

In ‘prevention’ education programs (drugs, tobacco, alcohol, violence, teenage sex, pregnancy, other risky behavior), life skills have a long history of prominent placement. One of the leading life skills programs in this field, called Life Skills Training (LST), began in the 1970s under the leadership of Dr. Gilbert Botvin. Botvin was trained as a clinical and developmental psychologist at Columbia University, and his first job was with the American Health Foundation, which was at the cutting edge of the field that eventually became known as preventative medicine. He became interested in risk reduction and behavioral interventions that might modify or enrich the development or risk factors. Convinced that major social and psychological factors promote the initiation of substance use and other risky behaviors, he developed a program he eventually called ‘life skills’ that had to do with promoting overall competency and more effective adolescent development, a more comprehensive approach targeting individual risk factors. LST is perhaps the best-known drug prevention program, and has been used with youth in all 50 states and all the territories of the USA, and it has been used in 39 countries across all six habited continents. LST has also demonstrated beneficial outcomes in over 35 rigorous evaluation studies (see Botvin LifeSkills Training, n.d. ).

The LST program consists of three major components that “cover the critical domains found to promote drug use… Research has shown that students who develop skills in these three domains are far less likely to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors” (See: https://www.lifeskillstraining.com/lst-overview/ ). The three components are drug resistance skills, personal self-management skills, and general social skills. Given the goals of this program, the empirical work on LST emphasizes outcomes of drinking, cigarette, and drug use, rather than measuring life skills as outcome variables. Different variations of the curriculum have been tested (the standard curriculum lasts 15 weeks and is implemented in schools).

Prevention programs that targeted the HIV/AIDS epidemic followed this model, often linking life skills training with content knowledge about how to prevent disease transmission (similar to linking content knowledge about tobacco, alcohol, and drugs in LST). As Boler and Aggleton ( 2005 ) explain, in the early 1990s, “when it became apparent that many young people (and adults) were not going to change their sexual behavior merely because they were told that they should, the international development community – particularly UNICEF— rallied around the idea of teaching life skills as part of HIV/AIDS education” (p. 1). The idea had its roots in the same body of scholarship from North America and European psychology, but not necessarily referencing prevention. Rather, it focused on the qualities of successful leadership. Over time, and in an attempt to make the skills more appealing to governments and communities, the term ‘life skills’ began to encompass an ever-increasing level of generic skills, including communicating, listening carefully, empathy-building, and income-generation. In 2005, Boler and Aggleton argued that claims regarding the role of these life skills in preventing HIV were made largely with no evidence (particularly with regards to sexual behavior).

A review of the effects and effectiveness of Life Skills Education for HIV prevention in young people (Yankah & Aggleton, 2008 ) found that most interventions to prevent HIV included a life skills component, and that programs worked best to positively influence knowledge, attitudes, intentions, skills, and abilities. However, life skills programs rarely produced consistent effects on sexual behavior or biological outcomes (the contraction of STDs). (This finding appears to remain true for more recent studies, such as Dunbar et al., 2010 .) Similar to the LST studies, these evaluations focus on behavioral outcomes and so we can learn little about the ways in which the programs impact life skills (as outcomes in and of themselves) and if changes in life skills are associated with any beneficial long-term outcomes (such as egalitarian intimate relationships) over time.

Despite a lack of documented impact of life skills training programs to prevent HIV, a “regional curriculum scan” conducted in 2011 (commissioned by UNESCO and UNFPA and authored by the Population Council, 2012 ) found that some form of “skills” was included in the HIV/prevention curricula of 10 African countries. However, the content was often deemed ‘weak’, particularly in terms of fostering critical thinking skills and advocacy skills. A subsequent review (Haberland, 2015 ) of rigorous evaluations of sexuality and HIV education programs found that most of the programs that met the review criteria had “skills” (not precisely defined) as a component of their curricula. However, what the review found was that the programs that addressed gender and power were five times more likely to be effective than those that did not. This points to the idea that the skill of ‘critical thinking about gender and power’ might be among the most important life skills for the prevention of HIV and changing sexual behavior.

We identified 43 empirical studies focusing on life skills for youth in developing country contexts published after 2005 – of these, we classified 35 in the prevention discourse community. As detailed in Table 2.4 , many of these studies are from India (N = 21). Other countries include Iran, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Thailand, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Many outcome variables are studied: health risk behavior; condom use; HIV knowledge; smoking; and a range of psychosocial outcomes (“positive emotions,” resisting peer pressure, self-knowledge). The rigor of these studies is quite variable, and the totality of evidence is not compelling due in part to the time frame (with research conducted immediately upon program completion) and the lack of specificity regarding measures used and research procedures (see Table 2.4 ).

Skills for Labor Market Productivity

In a recently published paper “Does Education Strengthen the Life Skills of Adolescents?” the “elevator pitch” is that “life skills, sometimes referred to as noncognitive skills or personality traits (e.g., conscientiousness or locus of control – the belief to influence events and their outcomes), affect labor market productivity” (Schurer, 2017 , p. 1). This paper is consistent with the discourse community of economists, who, drawing upon the work of personality psychologists, explore the relationship between “skills” and later life outcomes (including health and labor market). They also seek to understand which traits are malleable through educational interventions.

The work of James Heckman, Nobel Laureate in economics and Professor at the University of Chicago, and his co-authors on skills has allowed the concept to gain heft but unfortunately has not helped provide conceptual clarity. This is in part because Heckman’s own use of the term has evolved over time. In earlier publications, Heckman referred to “non-cognitive” skills (Heckman et al., 2006 , pp. 411–82). In a much-cited paper published by the National Bureau of Economics Research, Heckman and his co-author Tim Kautz use the term “character skills” (2013). In an OECD report that draws upon this 2013 paper, the authors revert to the term “non-cognitive” (Kautz et al., 2014 ). In his 2016 paper published in the journal Human Development and Capabilities, Heckman and his co-author Chase Corbin use the term “skills” without a modifier (Heckman & Corbin, 2016 ). While the specific wording of his argument has evolved, the crux of Heckman’s message is that the notion of “skill” is a useful one because “skill suggests that these attributes can be learned… all attributes can be shaped” (Heckman & Kautz, 2013 , p. 10; emphasis added). Heckman has also been consistent in his message regarding the inadequacy of outdated modes of measuring what might predict long-term life outcomes, namely IQ and other achievement tests. 3 Interventions must also target “character skills” valued in the labor market, in school, and other domains (Heckman & Kautz, 2013 ).

Given the widespread popularity and diffusion of these ideas, a closer examination of how Heckman and his co-authors conceptualize “skills” is warranted. Table 2.3 below lists ways in which Heckman and co-authors have explained and written about skills.

Heckman and his co-authors use the term “skill” as the broadest possible category – essentially to capture anything important for personal and social well-being (even referring to “health” as a skill). In Heckman and Kautz ( 2013 ), greater attention is given to the field of psychology and its “relatively well-accepted” taxonomy of descriptors or temperament attributes of personality. These are the “Big Five” domains, including conscientiousness, openness to new experience, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism/emotional stability. 4 From these traits, Heckman and Kautz (drawing upon a table adapted from psychologists John and Srivastava) list a number of facets, related skills, and “analogous childhood temperament skills” ( 2013 , p. 12). However, they are careful not to use the label “traits” as they believe that this term signifies a sense of “permanence and possibly also of heritability” (Heckman & Kautz, 2013 , p. 10).

Heckman and Kautz explain that they use the term skills rather than traits because “skills suggests that these attributes can be learned, both cognitive and character skills can change and be changed over the course of the lifecycle” ( 2013 , p. 10; emphasis added). While research in psychology does indicate that personality traits change throughout the lifecycle, 5 the claim Heckman and Kautz make regarding how traits can “be changed” (through interventions) is debatable. How and why personality traits change and the degree to which they can change through interventions over time is an active research area in the field of psychology.

Heckman’s work is cited by a number of donor agencies that work in the life skills area – including the World Bank, who published the brief “Life Skills: What Are They, Why do They Matter, and How Are They Taught?’ in 2013. In this brief, they draw heavily from Heckman’s work as well as other economists who write from a human capital perspective. In short, in this perspective, life skills matter because they have positive implications for health, education, and labor market outcomes.

The empirical evidence base regarding the effectiveness of labor market training programs that focus on life skills suggests mixed results, with some studies showing that training has little effect and others finding a positive long run effect (J-PAL, 2017 ). Some of this research has focused on the pedagogy and educational strategies used to deliver training programs, and some encouraging results from randomized evaluations of programs that combine an emphasis on “cognitive” and “noncognitive” skills training improve educational trajectories and graduation rates, and they have positive effects on labor market outcomes (J-PAL, 2017 ). One example of this is the randomized evaluation of the A Ganar program, a sports-based job training program that emphasizes technical skills as well as “life and employability” skills featured in Murphy-Graham (Chap. 7 , this volume). While the program did not have any significant effect on the employment rate, or number of jobs or hours worked by participating youth, there was a positive impact on job “quality” as measured by wages, benefits, and job satisfaction (Duthie et al., 2018 ).

A recent review of interventions to strengthen the life skills of adolescents found that there is a small evidence base regarding labor market outcomes, and so general conclusions are not possible. Measurement of life skills has also proven very difficult, which raises concerns regarding the validity of the findings (Schurer, 2017 ). Despite these findings, there is some consensus that adolescence offers a window of opportunity to teach life skills through training programs. However, compared with early-childhood programs, the evidence on adolescent programs is less abundant (Heckman & Kautz, 2013 ). Furthermore, “there remains a feeling that [skills] training must be a key component of labor market integration given the large gap between the very low skill level of young people and the needs of firms, especially in developing countries” (J-PAL, 2017 , p. 1). Table 2.4 includes two additional studies that focus on labor market outcomes, both of which had mixed results.

Life Skills for Quality Education

“ A poor quality education is almost like no education. Great progress has been achieved in enrolling children in school around the world. But it is not enough to get children in school. We also need to ensure they learn to read, count and acquire the necessary life skills.” This message, which appears on the front page of the Global Partnership for Education website, Footnote 2 exemplifies how life skills are a key component of the “bottom line” message about educational quality that currently circulates among key policy actors in the field of international development education. In addition to basic literacy and numeracy, life skills are a key component of education quality. In short, there is consensus that improving the quality of education is a key international goal, but there are many different notions of what constitutes quality education. Among these different conceptualizations of quality education, there is consensus that students should develop life skills (Barrett et al., 2006 ; DeJaeghere et al., 2016 ; Nikel & Lowe, 2010 ; Tikly & Barrett, 2011 ; UNICEF, 2010 ; World Bank, 2018 ).

This third discourse community, which we call “quality education,” has emphasized life skills education in part due to growing recognition that children and adolescents in developing countries do not always benefit from extended years of schooling in terms of what they are learning. Referred to as the “learning crisis”, the critique is that the curriculum is highly academic and that it is disconnected from what adolescents need to learn to do everyday tasks and engage in community life. Furthermore, what the curriculum does emphasize, namely basic literacy and numeracy, also has abysmal outcomes. This recognition and its perceived importance spurred the publication of the World Bank World Development Report “Learning to Realize Education’s Promise”, which begins with an overview of the dimensions of the learning crisis (World Bank, 2018 ).

Policy statements and documents from the World Bank, blogs by Washington think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, and commissioned research programs such as DFID’s EdQual or the Raising Learning Outcomes in Education Systems (RLO) attempt to grapple with how to improve teaching and learning in formal schools. Against this backdrop, international education actors including philanthropic foundations, bilateral and multilateral donors, and local and international non-governmental organizations have launched what is likely to be thousands of non-formal education programs that focus on life skills (a review of programs in just three countries identified 103 programs for adolescent girls) (Dupuy et al., 2018 ). These programs are intended to fill the void that is left by poor quality schools by serving children and adolescents who are enrolled in school with afterschool or summer programs. Additionally, they serve children and adolescents who never attended or have dropped out of school (potentially, at least in part, due to low quality).

Life skills education for adolescent girls has particularly gained prominence in the last decade. Advocates for girls’ education have increasingly come to realize that the “get them into school and all will be well” was a faulty assumption (Sahni, 2017 , and also in her discussion of the Prerna school, this volume). For many years, scholars and international organizations such as CARE and Plan International focused not on “life skills” per se, but rather on girls’ and women’s empowerment through education. Getting girls into school, through expanded access that often involved scholarships and cash transfers was just the first step of the empowerment process. The hope was, and continues to be, that education can be a site to challenge the gender norms that have caused under-representation of girls in the system. However, empowering educational experiences for girls within the formal system are rare (see Murphy-Graham & Lloyd, 2016 for a review of empowering education for adolescent girls).

Some organizations that emphasize life skills education for girls often simultaneously emphasize girls’ empowerment. However, a discursive shift seems to have taken place whereby life skills has recently become the focal point for organizations working with girls. These include organizations such as Advancing Girls’ Education, BRAC, CAMFED, CARE, Plan International, Room to Read, and Save the Children. It is possible that “life skills” is a more palatable term for interventions because they do not explicitly include the word “power” and may therefore seem less radical or politically motivated. Engaging the term “life skills” may allow these organizations to more effectively engage ministries of education, who may be familiar and supportive of life skills programming because it is already a part of their HIV/AIDS prevention or technical and vocational training curriculum (mentioned in our discussion of the first and second discourse communities). Likewise, using the term “life skills” for girls rather than empowerment may enable NGOs to better forge allegiances with stakeholders familiar with labor market training programs (such as the business community).

An earlier review of programs to empower adolescent girls identified four competencies for empowerment that appeared across interventions. These included developing critical ways of thinking and learning, personal competencies, social competencies, and productive competencies (Murphy-Graham & Lloyd, 2016 ). These same categories are often included in conceptualizations of life skills for adolescent girls. In addition to our Table 2.1 above, Kwauk and Braga ( 2017 ) and Dupuy et al. ( 2018 ) list organizations and their life skills definitions – common are an emphasis on critical thinking (sometimes called cognitive skills), personal skills, and interpersonal skills (including community living). However, as Kwauk and Braga ( 2017 ) point out, at the level of life skills education programming for girls, practitioners have often limited their scope to quite specific outcomes, such as sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, or labor market outcomes (and our identification of these as distinct discourse communities clarifies why this is the case). As such, life skills programming and its focus on communication, negotiation, self-efficacy, and self-esteem focuses on imparting technical knowledge and does not enable girls to act differently in her everyday life in her home and community (Kwauk & Braga, 2017 ):

A narrow focus on skills, together with conflating knowledge as skills, can lead to problems in program, curriculum, and policy design, implementation, and assessment. In particular: misaligned interventions and outcomes; misidentified target skills; overlooked building blocks and/or strategic knowledge; ineffective pedagogy or program delivery; problems with measurement; and overstated claims about an intervention or the importance of specific skills (p. 6).

Kwauk and Braga further point out that life skills programs focus on impacts including risk for substance abuse, reduced risky sexual behavior, and mindset change, there is too little attention to whether or not life skills education leads to “ transformative change between the individual girl and her social, political, and economic environment. It also does not address whether or how such change for a girl might combine into broader collective action that transforms existing social norms, behaviors, and power relations that have systematically placed girls and women at a disadvantage” (Kwauk & Braga, 2017 , p. 7). They propose a reconceptualization of life skills as competencies that are a mix of interpersonal, intrapersonal, and cognitive skills. Coupled with knowledge, and attitudes, these constitute a set of competencies (life skills) that enable youth to function, thrive, and adapt in their everyday lives (Kwauk & Braga, 2017 , p. 5). Their proposal is to more explicitly link or to “translate” girls’ life skills education to social change. This feature – linking life skills competencies to social change – is not commonly present in most work on life skills, particularly from the other two discourse communities. An explicit focus on social change – and the life skills needed to foster change processes – is a more recent feature of scholarship that is consistent with earlier work on education for youth empowerment (see DeJaeghere et al., 2016 ; Murphy-Graham, 2012 ).

In part due to the recency of work in this discourse community, there is quite a slim evidence base regarding the effectiveness of interventions that attempt to improve the quality of education for youth (see Table 2.4 ). We found that, overall, there is little evidence to date that interventions have positive effects on life skills conceptualized as a combination of interpersonal, intrapersonal and cognitive skills. An earlier review of life skills education programs found that, while there are a very small number of rigorous evaluations of life skills programs benefitting adolescents, they “generally positively influence psycho-social and attitudinal outcomes, health and relationships. They can help to prevent early marriage and they help to develop important economic and cognitive skills” (Dupuy et al., 2018 ).

A narrative systematic review of life skills education (Nasheeda et al., 2018 ) reviews twenty-five studies (that met their inclusion criteria) in both developed and developing countries. This review concludes that the totality of quantitative evidence for the studies reviewed delivers encouraging prospects for improving life skills education programs. At the same time, their conclusions also echo Kwauk and Braga’s ( 2017 ) finding that studies tend to focus on “life skills components” as opposed to “understanding what knowledge, skills and attitudes adolescents require in order for positive behavior change to occur” (Nasheeda et al., 2018 , p. 13). There are two additional impact evaluations of life skills programming in progress: The Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (Hewett et al., 2017 ) evaluation includes a number of validated scales/measures of self-efficacy, gender-normative beliefs, financial literacy, knowledge of sexual and reproductive health, as well as other outcomes of interest (including behavioral and biological outcomes). In addition to this study, the findings from a randomized control trial of the girls’ education and life skills program implemented by Room to Read in India includes a life skills assessment tool that includes self-reported scales and activity-based tasks. While these two studies are informed by a notion of life skills that is broader in nature – consistent with the educationist discourse community studies –they will, unfortunately, still not be able to capture the extent to which life skills programming can foster “transformative change between girls and her social, political and economic environment” (Kwauk & Braga, 2017 , p. 7).

The aim of this chapter has been to gain a clearer understanding of how life skills education has been conceptualized, given its popularity in the field of education. We identified three distinct discourse communities that are concerned with life skills education. To recap, these are: (1) ‘prevention and protection’ which includes practitioners and scholars in public health and social work, (2) ‘labor market outcomes’ which draws from the work of economists, and (3) ‘quality education’ which draws on the work of educationists. We identify three areas of synergy among these distinct communities which include mastering specific tasks/information and knowledge; development of a set of social and emotional competencies; and fostering critical ways of thinking.

The identification of these synergies should not be considered a new framework or conceptualization of life skills – it is really intended to provide a least common denominator of sorts across these discourse communities. Focusing only on what is common across these discourse communities may be overly reductive. At the same time, a common framework or shared way of thinking about life skills that is multi-dimensional will be necessary to advance research and practice in the field. The identification of these three distinct discourse communities explains why actors in the field focus on differential program goals. Highlighting the core life skills elements across the discourse communities – critical ways of thinking, development of social and emotional competencies, and mastery of certain tasks and information – allows for a common set of broadly shared goals for life skills programming.

This chapter, explaining how three discourse communities conceptualize life skills, and the areas of overlap between them, can help provide conceptual clarity and will hopefully advance research and knowledge in developing, implementing, and evaluating high-quality interventions that are adapted to local contexts to best support youth to live life well.

We use the term “discourse community” rather than “field” or “discipline” because it also allows to capture the various actors working in educational settings, including non-governmental organizations, local education stakeholders, and the youth, facilitators, and community members that are engaged in life skills education programming around the world.

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Murphy-Graham, E., Cohen, A.K. (2022). Life Skills Education for Youth in Developing Countries: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?. In: DeJaeghere, J., Murphy-Graham, E. (eds) Life Skills Education for Youth. Young People and Learning Processes in School and Everyday Life, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85214-6_2

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Life skills education is more than teaching skills

Subscribe to the center for universal education bulletin, christina kwauk and christina kwauk former brookings expert, head of climate and education - unbounded associates @ckwauk amanda braga ab amanda braga project manager - center for universal education @amanda__braga.

November 21, 2017

This blog is a summary of our new report “Translating competencies to empowered action,” which can be downloaded here .

Today the buzz around life skills education for girls is at an all-time high. Policy and civil society actors—from United Nations agencies to grassroots community-based organizations—have made great strides developing life skills programming to help girls achieve a wide range of empowering cognitive, health, social, economic, and political outcomes. But in many cases, such newfound empowerment is met with violent backlash by family and community members, particularly when girls attempt to apply skills like communication, negotiation, or leadership outside of the safe spaces provided by a program. As a result, the burden of social change has been largely placed on the shoulders of the girl-child.

At Brookings, we are examining how policy and civil society actors can do a better job shifting that burden of change from girls themselves to her broader social and political context. As part of our larger work on Skills for a Changing World , we’re asking questions about how girls’ life skills programming can be better linked to transformative social change and the disruption of structural inequalities that sustain barriers for girls and women.

One answer is that life skills education should be more than just about the girl’s own skills development. Practitioners should also be focused on the girl’s agency (her capacity to see and to make choices) and whether enabling opportunity structures (like policies, social norms, and institutions) exist in her environment.

In our new framework on girls’ life skills education, we draw on the fields of gender empowerment and the psychology of learning to help practitioners better design life skills programming that connects girls’ life skills development not only to empowerment but also to wider social change. We’ve summarized this into four guiding principles:

1. Consider a broader range of competencies For starters, practitioners need to conceptualize life skills as a range of competencies (what one can do) that enable girls (and boys) to function, thrive, and adapt in their lived realities, rather than a narrow set of skills for life. These competencies are comprised of networks of Knowledge (what one knows), Skills (what one has), and Attitudes (what one believes and values), or KSAs. Conceptualizing life skills in this way well help encourage practitioners to be more purposeful not only around the whats of life skills, but also the hows of applying such competencies to navigate unique challenges at pivotal moments across her life and in different contexts.

3. Be intentional about development and change Evidence from the psychology of learning stresses the continuous, dialogical, and non-linear nature of skills development over the child’s life. Life skills development is no different. Practitioners must therefore be more intentional about building upon foundational KSAs throughout key moments of the girl’s life, including early childhood through adolescence and young adulthood.

But tied to development is change. This rings true not only at the individual level of the girl, but also for her wider social context. As girls build KSAs important for her empowerment, there is a consequent reaction and response by her peers, family, and community that must be accounted for by programs. This interaction can lead to the strengthening of her agency, as well as to the weakening of it.

4. Support girls to “read” context, gender, and power Finally, if there is one “life skill” that we believe is foundational for girls, it is the ability to read her social, political, and economic contexts with an understanding of how gender and power have structured her realities and opportunities. Life skills programs must support girls to recognize, navigate, and leverage the dynamic structures in her life if she is to translate KSAs into empowered action. Without this, programs risk girls’ life skills development getting “stuck” in the safe spaces in which they are learned.

As the girls’ education community continues to center life skills across program, donor, and government policy priorities, we must ensure that actors take into account the urgent need to focus on more than just the girl’s skills development—lest we continue to place the burden of social change on girls themselves rather than on the gender unequal societies in which she lives. We acknowledge that this will be difficult to apply in practice, but catalyzing transformative social change has and will never be a straightforward process. Our hope is that by focusing on the above four principles, policy and civil society actors will be to push the field even further to ensure that life skills initiatives move girls and women toward both improved life outcomes and wider systemic change.

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What Is Life Skills Education: Importance, Challenges, & Categories

Life skills education has become commonplace today, but many people do not know what it means.

However, as the world changes, so do many things, including how we define and look at life skills education.

Generally, life skills education pertains to teaching essential life skills. These skills help children and young adults develop the knowledge, attitudes, and values they need later in life.

This type of education is not focused on teaching young people to pass exams and go to university but rather prepares them to live useful and successful lives.

Life skills are essential because they form the foundation for success in many areas of life.

The approach is integrated into all individuals’ contexts and needs. That includes situations that happen while growing up and starting work, among other things.

This article examines the importance of life skills education, what life skills are, and the benefits of learning them.

What are life skills?

Life skills are adaptive and positive behavior abilities that enable you to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

It describes a set of core skills considered crucial to an individual’s social functioning. That can be a means of obtaining employment and/or living independently.

In the case of children and youth, the emphasis is usually on areas such as; social skills, interpersonal communication, reasoning, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and self-management (across a range of areas, including time management). 

Additionally, these kinds of skills are broad and transferable. That means they are applicable across different situations in life, including; home, work, community settings, and leisure activities. 

Also, a second dimension to life skills often focuses on managing your health throughout your lifespan.

This includes personal hygiene practices like; nutrition, physical fitness, mental health, and prevention of harmful levels of substance use. 

It also includes your knowledge about how to access health care when needed.

Why is life skills education important?

Life skills education empowers young people to lead healthy, productive lives.

This skills-based education also helps young people acquire the skills necessary to make informed decisions, communicate effectively, develop caring and responsible behaviors, and cope with challenging situations.

Also, life skills training for all young people is critical. Human development specialists agree that youth need a particular life skill competencies to thrive, stay healthy, and succeed.

Additionally, this training is essential to learn how to set and achieve positive goals and feel confident in who you are.

Also, it helps you to manage your emotions and behavior, establish healthy relationships, make responsible decisions, and enjoy learning.

In addition to planned activities in the classroom and at school, adolescents develop these life skills by engaging in social situations.

It is a strategy for promoting mental health that focuses on creating a positive and supportive school environment.

What are the benefits of life skills education?

Life skills education has proven so essential for child development that governments and education authorities in many countries have introduced it as an essential part of the school curriculum .

This education gives children the confidence and ability to make healthy choices, manage their emotions, and build strong relationships.

Training in life skills can give children a toolbox of approaches, strategies, and coping mechanisms to support their learning.

Getting a life skills education has several key benefits. They include:

1. Strengthens the self-respect of children

Self-respect is necessary for children to build healthy relationships and make wise life choices. Life skills education strengthens the self-esteem of children in a supportive environment.

Self-esteem is a child’s belief in her worth as a person or friend. When your child develops healthy self-esteem, she branches out from family and friends, exploring the world and trying new things.

Furthermore, children who develop self-respect have a better chance of successful lives.

Experts have found that self-respect is much more valuable than you’d think, and life skills training can help strengthen that in children.

2. Gives children tools to improve their quality of life

Life skills training teaches children essential skills to help them navigate real-world challenges like conflict resolution, managing finances, goal-setting, and time management.

Through life skills education, students learn essential skills to benefit their peace of mind and quality of life.

Also, they learn how to manage stress, calm their minds and bodies, exercise, eat healthy, set goals, stay on top of their responsibilities, and more.

These powerful tools enable children to handle everyday challenges and crises.

3. Kids develop a sense of social responsibility

Life skills training encourages kids to become more responsible while respecting and valuing their peers, teachers, and school community.

Also, community service projects and fun activities teach children positive life skills and foster a sense of responsibility.

It also fosters an understanding of teamwork and leadership that applies to every situation throughout their lives.

4. Life skills education develops teamwork skills

Developing teamwork skills is crucial for academic success and beyond.

Children who have learned life skills are better prepared to tackle academic courses, build strong relationships with peers, and succeed socially and emotionally.

Also, young people participating in life skills training can take the lead in teamwork-based activities that empower them with leadership skills.

5. It helps students feel more confident

A life skills training program helps students feel more confident about their ability to solve problems, make good decisions, and take responsibility for their actions.

Students also learn to be more proficient in communication, child development, food proficiency, money management, and physical activity.

6. Children learn to use resources wisely

Life skills training helps children use their essential life resources-time, space, and materials wisely.

In addition, the ability to utilize these resources wisely is essential for success in all work and leisure areas.

Children learn to use resources wisely as they explore possible solutions to problems, develop decision-making techniques, and practice patience through trial and error.

7. Life skills education makes students self-sufficient and confident adults

Children who learn to develop their life skills early are more likely to be successful as adults. Life skills help kids learn how to handle obstacles and take responsibility for their actions.

Also, life skills training helps develop their social skills, allows them to express and manage their emotions, and gives them the confidence they need to succeed.

8. Helps with focus and attention skills

Help your child develop the focus and attention skills needed to thrive in school and beyond.

The life skills curriculum covers critical topics like stress management, respectful communication, self-advocacy, sensory processing, executive functioning, and memory in a fun and engaging environment.

9. Improves time management skills

Research shows that life skills education improves time management skills and helps children plan for their goals.

Students also learn how to set a schedule, stick to it, determine resources to allocate, and see which tasks are urgent. 

By practicing these skills, children also learn how important it is to set goals and how rewarding it is to reach them.

10. Life skills education encourages independence in kids 

While life skills training can help a child in school and socially, it can also help with other aspects of their future success.

From interviewing for a job to managing finances, life skills education can be the key to living a fulfilling life as an adult. 

Although teaching these skills can seem daunting, there are many small ways to encourage independence in your child from a young age.

11. Life skills education gives a boost to academic success

Why is life skills education important, and how does it help? Life skills education.

Also, early life lessons give students an advantage as they progress through school and beyond. 

12. Develops observation and critical thinking skills

Simulation activities are a great way to help young learners build on their observational and critical thinking skills .

The activities should also promote the development of fine motor and communication skills, visual observation, and cognitive thinking abilities.

What are the challenges affecting life skills education?

The challenges affecting life skills education include; a lack of resources, inadequate teacher and learner training, family support problems, dual responsibility to meet literacy and life skills targets, and managing cultural sensitivities.

Also, this problem is compounded by gender-related issues, including a lack of investment in adolescent girls (compared to boys), cultural barriers, and social norms that limit girls’ access to education.

Additionally, there is little interest (or opportunity) in teaching life skills education in schools since they may appear as only benefitting low achievers and “non-cognitive” students.

However, the reality is that life skills education can help all students, including high achievers.

This occurs by encouraging them to think about what they want from their education and how it helps them develop as a whole person.

What are the categories of life skills?

Life skills include interpersonal and self-awareness skills, communication, decision-making, problem-solving, and coping with emotions.

These categories encompass many life skills, from physical to mental health.

Self-awareness skills

Self-awareness skills are the ability to reflect on your thoughts, feelings, and actions. They are also essential for developing a sense of self.

Recognizing your strengths and challenges makes it easier to develop empathy for others and regulate your emotions.

Communication skills

Communication skills are talents and abilities that enable you to convey your thoughts, feelings, ideas, and information to others.

These may include listening, speaking, gesturing, and questioning (such as reflectively).

Decision making skills

Decision-making involves identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions.

Organizing relevant information and alternatives helps you make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions.

Problem solving skills

Having problem-solving skills can help you overcome obstacles creatively and find workable solutions.

The better your problem-solving skills are, the more asset you will be to an employer or project team. 

Coping skills

Coping skills are techniques that help children, adolescents, and adults deal with emotional distress.

They are used to increase self-control and emotional regulation to better handle disappointment, frustration, and other negative feelings. 

How does life skills education affect society?

Life skills education equips individuals with the knowledge and competencies necessary to establish the life skills necessary to live successfully in society.

Also, minors who participate in life skills education are more likely to be respectful and responsible towards their community.

Why is life skills education necessary for employment?

Life skills training provides young people with the knowledge and experience they will need to succeed in their careers.

It covers communication, problem-solving, goal setting, self-management, and resilience, which are necessary for any profession. In addition, it teaches habits like punctuality, getting along with coworkers, and showing up on time for work.

Why is life skills education crucial to a child’s development?

You use life skills education to teach children how to make and maintain friendships, better communicate their needs, and resolve conflict.

This teaching method helps children develop social-emotional skills essential for school achievement and success in adulthood. 

Also, through life skills, children learn to deal with transition, stress, emotion, impulse control, self-esteem, and evaluation of consequences.

Life skills education is proven to impact children in the following ways: – Improved academic performance, improved social and emotional health, improved mental health, decreased stress, burnout, and anxiety.

In addition, this education is the best way to teach children observation and critical thinking skills to solve problems in their lives and recognize the opportunities that come their way.

Finally, teaching children adaptive skills also helps them maximize their potential.

These are practical abilities that children need to function and meet the demands of daily living. Learn more about adaptive skills and how important they are.

I hope you found this article helpful. Thanks for reading.

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What is Skills-Based Learning and Why It’s Important?

Skills-based learning is an educational approach that focuses on developing specific, practical skills and competencies rather than just acquiring theoretical knowledge. It emphasizes hands-on, experiential learning that equips individuals with the abilities they need to perform tasks, solve problems, and excel in real-world situations.

Embracing Skills-Based Learning in the Modern Job Market

As the job market evolves, skills-based learning has become a crucial component for professional success. This guide explores the benefits of incorporating skill-based learning techniques in education and career development , empowering adult learners and non-traditional students to excel in their chosen fields. By focusing on specific, relevant skills and using effective learning strategies, individuals can unlock new opportunities and achieve their career goals .

Delving into the World of Skills-Based Learning

Skills-based learning, often referred to as skill-based or competency-based learning, is an approach that emphasizes the development of specific, practical skills rather than the acquisition of broad, theoretical knowledge. This form of learning is tailored to the individual’s career goals and focuses on the mastery of skills that can be directly applied to real-world situations.

Traditional learning often follows a more linear path, with students acquiring knowledge through lectures and textbooks, then demonstrating their understanding through tests and assignments. In contrast, skills-based learning is more flexible and adaptable, allowing learners to focus on the skills that are most relevant to their career aspirations and personal interests.

Key Characteristics of Skills-Based Learning

Examples of skill-based learning techniques include hands-on training, simulations, and case studies. These methods encourage active engagement and facilitate the development of practical skills, empowering learners to excel in their chosen fields.  

Here are the main characteristics of skills-based learning:

• Practical Application : Learning is centered around practical tasks, projects, or activities that simulate real-world scenarios. This approach enables learners to directly apply what they’ve learned.
• Skill Development : The primary goal is to build specific skills, such as technical skills (e.g., programming, carpentry) or soft skills (e.g., communication, teamwork).
• Outcome-Oriented : Success is measured by the learner’s ability to demonstrate proficiency in a particular skill or competency, rather than by traditional academic assessments like exams or essays.
• Problem-Solving : Skills-based learning often involves problem-solving and critical thinking as learners tackle real challenges and learn to adapt and innovate.
• Hands-On Experience : Learners actively engage with the subject matter through practical exercises, experiments, or real-life tasks, fostering deeper understanding and retention.
• Personalization : Instruction can be tailored to each learner’s needs, allowing them to focus on the skills most relevant to their goals or career path.
• Lifelong Learning : Skills-based learning aligns with the idea that learning doesn’t stop after formal education. It encourages individuals to continuously acquire and refine skills throughout their lives.

This approach is particularly valuable in fields where practical expertise and hands-on experience are crucial, such as vocational training , technical education, professional development, and certain areas of higher education. Skills-based learning is often seen as a more practical and career-focused alternative to traditional academic learning, as it equips individuals with the abilities they need to succeed in the workforce and in various life situations.

Types of Programs and Schools That Focus On Skills-Based Learning

Many higher education programs incorporate skills-based learning to varying degrees, but some are specifically designed to prioritize practical skill development over traditional academic coursework. These programs are often found in fields where hands-on expertise is crucial. Here are several types of higher education programs that emphasize skills-based learning:

Vocational and Technical Colleges: These institutions offer programs that focus on specific trades or technical skills, such as automotive repair, welding , culinary arts, and healthcare. Students gain practical skills and often receive certifications or diplomas.

Apprenticeships: Apprenticeship programs combine on-the-job training with classroom instruction. They are available in fields like construction, electrician work, plumbing, and manufacturing. Apprentices work alongside experienced professionals to develop skills.

Community Colleges: Community colleges frequently offer associate degree programs with a strong emphasis on practical skills. These degrees can lead to careers in fields like nursing , information technology, and automotive technology.

Coding Bootcamps: These short, intensive programs focus on teaching coding and programming skills. Coding Bootcamps are designed to quickly prepare students for careers in software development and related fields.

Certificate and Diploma Programs:  Many colleges and online platforms such as Udacity offer courses that are designed to provide practical, job-ready skills in high-demand areas such as technology and business. These programs typically culminate in a certificate or diploma.

Trade Schools : Trade schools specialize in providing education and training for specific trades or industries. This includes fields like HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), cosmetology, and construction management.

Nursing and Healthcare Programs: Programs for nurses and healthcare professionals, such as certified nursing assistant (CNA) or medical assistant programs , emphasize practical skills for patient care.

Culinary Schools : Culinary programs teach students cooking techniques and restaurant management skills, preparing them for careers in the culinary arts .

Design and Creative Arts Schools: Schools focusing on design, fashion, and creative arts offer programs that emphasize practical skills like graphic design , fashion design, and interior design.

Trade Apprenticeships in the Building Trades: These apprenticeships provide hands-on training in construction-related fields like carpentry, plumbing , electrical work , and masonry.

Emergency Services Training: Programs for emergency medical technicians (EMTs), paramedics, and firefighters emphasize practical skills for responding to emergencies and saving lives.

Applied Sciences and Engineering Programs: Some universities offer engineering and applied sciences programs with a strong practical component, allowing students to work on real-world projects and gain technical expertise.

Mini-MBA Programs (Non-Degree): Mini-MBA programs are shorter, condensed versions of traditional Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs. They are designed to provide students with a fundamental understanding of key business concepts and management skills in a shorter timeframe. Mini-MBA programs often emphasize practical skills and real-world applications, allowing participants to immediately apply what they learn in their work or business ventures.

Selecting the Right Skills for Your Skill-Based Learning Journey

Identifying the appropriate skills for your skill-based learning plan requires a thorough assessment of your personal strengths and weaknesses. Reflecting on your abilities and areas for improvement can help you determine which skills are most relevant to your chosen career path.

When selecting skills to develop, consider both hard skills, such as technical abilities, and soft skills, like communication and problem-solving. Transferable skills , those that can be applied across various industries and roles, are particularly valuable in skill-based learning. These versatile skills can provide you with a competitive edge in the job market and enable you to adapt to a changing professional landscape.

Creating a Successful Skills-Based Learning Plan

Developing a skills-based learning plan begins with setting clear and achievable goals for your skill development. By defining the skills you want to acquire and the level of mastery you aim to achieve, you can create a roadmap for your learning journey.

Next, identify the resources available for skill acquisition. Online platforms and courses, workshops and seminars, and books and articles are valuable sources of information and guidance. Explore these resources to find the most suitable learning opportunities for your needs.

Finally, establish a timeline for your skill development and mastery. This timeline will help you stay on track and monitor your progress, ensuring that you are consistently working towards your goals. Remember, skill-based learning is a continuous process, and your plan should be flexible enough to adapt to your evolving needs and aspirations.

Putting Skills-Based Learning Techniques into Practice

Active learning strategies are essential for effective skill development in a skills-based learning plan. Techniques such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, and collaborative learning encourage hands-on experience and real-world application, fostering skill mastery.

Integrating these techniques into existing educational and professional development programs can enhance their effectiveness and relevance to your career goals . By focusing on practical skills, you can maximize the value of your learning experience and accelerate your professional growth.

As you progress, it’s crucial to assess your development and adjust your learning strategies as needed. This ongoing evaluation ensures that you remain on track and continue to refine your skills, preparing you for success in your chosen field.

Establishing a Supportive Learning Network

Networking plays a significant role in skill development, as it enables you to connect with like-minded individuals, industry professionals, and mentors who can provide valuable insights and guidance. Building a strong network can enhance your learning experience, open doors to new opportunities, and help you stay informed about emerging trends and best practices in your field.

Additionally, establishing partnerships with industry professionals and mentors can offer you personalized advice, support, and encouragement throughout your learning journey. By leveraging these relationships, you can ensure that your skill development remains on track and aligned with your career goals.

Proving Your Skills for Career Growth

Demonstrating your skills for career advancement requires showcasing your accomplishments and expertise to potential employers. One way to do this is by updating your resumes and CVs with relevant skills and achievements. This information should be presented clearly and concisely, highlighting your unique value and capabilities.

Another effective method for displaying your skills is through portfolios and work samples. These materials provide tangible evidence of your expertise, allowing employers to see the direct application of your skills in real-world situations.

Finally, interviews and networking events offer opportunities to articulate your skill mastery and demonstrate your proficiency. By confidently discussing your skills and experiences, you can make a lasting impression on employers and increase your chances of career advancement.

Unlock Your Potential with Skills-Based Learning

As we conclude our exploration of skills-based learning, it’s evident that this approach is crucial for achieving career success in today’s competitive job market. By focusing on specific, relevant skills and implementing effective learning techniques, you can unlock new opportunities and advance in your chosen field. We encourage you to continue developing your skills and embracing lifelong learning as a key to personal growth and professional growth. At Pathways to Advancement, we’re here to support you with expert advice and resources for further skill-based learning opportunities. Discover more at Pathways to Advancement .

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Skills-Based Learning – When, Where, How and Why

Credentialate

• digital badges , lifelong learning , micro-credentials , professional skills , skills , upskilling , workplace skills

Skills-based learning is not the learning formula for tomorrow. It’s the learning formula for today. most skills-based learning is taking place in more informal, lifelong learning environments that come either after, alongside, or in some cases in place of formal education. In this information-rich Credentialate Guide, we explore how education providers are addressing the increasing demand for skills development and verification.

The Essentials: Skills-based learning

• What is skills-based learning? Skills-based learning is not the learning formula for tomorrow. It’s the learning formula for today. It is the acquisition of industry aligned skills that will prepare us for the jobs of tomorrow.
• Where does skills-based learning usually occur? There are programs looking to introduce skills-based learning into more formal education environments, however, most skills-based learning is taking place in the lifelong learning environments that come either after, alongside, or in some cases in place of formal education. 
• What skills-based learning is included in formal education? Educators are seeking to align existing curricula to the skills industry is looking for – such as aligning to industry or job market data and using AI or machine learning to identify which jobs need re-skilling or up-skilling. 
• What skills-based learning takes place in informal environments? Due to the ever increasing skills gap, many industries have developed their own internal education frameworks complete with micro-badging credentials. Short-form learning – such as short courses, bootcamps, professional certifications and licenses – may be more valuable to employers seeking very specific skills.
• How is skills-based learning assessed and verified? This is an area currently in flux, with no universaly accepted testing standard or verification framework. Where hard skills are easier to measure, soft skills judged on subjective or individual perception can undercut the credibility of the qualification. 
• How Credentialate provides a new perspective Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform. It helps you discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Credentialate is the only Credential Evidence Platform that includes personalised qualitative, quantitative and artefact evidence record verified directly from within the digital badge. For institutions, educators can map and manage their skills infrastructure and track skills attainment across the institution and against existing frameworks.

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The Full Story: Skills based learning – when, where how and why

• What is skills-based learning?
• Where does skills-based learning usually occur?
• What skills-based learning is included in formal education?
• What skills-based learning takes place in informal environments?
• How is skills-based learning assessed and verified?

How Credentialate provides a new perspective

Skills-based learning is not the learning formula for tomorrow. It’s the learning formula for today. And there are educators actively working on the problem and potential solutions. Before we dive in, we should clarify that we are not talking about the competency based education models (CBE) utilised in a variety of institutions and systems globally. Rather, we are talking about the acquisition of industry aligned skills that will prepare us for the jobs of tomorrow.

The skills-based learning environment

This is a complex answer. There are programs looking to introduce skills-based learning into more formal education environments. For example, the UK-based skills builder is a universal framework to teach skills like listening to learners spanning K-12 and even into post-secondary education. This framework is also underpinning work by their partner employer organisations.

They are by no means the only ones. However, most skills-based learning is taking place in the lifelong learning environment. The reasons, simplified, are related to accreditation, funding, and frameworks, all of which we have discussed in our Untangling the Modern Credential Marketplace blog series.

In other words, most skills-based learning is taking place in more informal, lifelong learning environments that come either after, alongside, or in some cases in place of formal education. Where, exactly is this learning taking place?

Getting formal

In formal education, there are two places where skills-based learning can take place. The first is inside the curriculum and the second is outside the curriculum. Why is this important?

Skills-based education inside the curriculum must align with existing frameworks . In many cases, these frameworks are extremely rigid and come with legacy ideas that are difficult to change. Most are mandated by large agencies, from local, regional, or federal governments to accreditation agencies and others. These constraints can slow innovation and the evolution of curricula.

This doesn’t mean efforts are not being made. EMSI, based in the US, has introduced their Skillabi program. Using technology, educators can take several steps:

• Skillification  – current curriculum and the skills taught are matched with skills employers are looking for in an apples-to-apples comparison.
• Market-aligned skills are identified and emphasised.
• In-demand skills are identified, skills that educators may want to add to their curriculum.
• The analysis shows where needed skills are taught in other programs and could be cross-applied through curriculum modifications.

In other words, the program attempts to make it possible to align existing curricula to the skills industry is looking for . Essentially educators can “rummage through the pockets” of courses taught elsewhere in their ecosystem, incorporate them into current programs, thus increasing their relevance.

Yet another is Faethm AI , an “AI engine that is trained using billions of workforce data points. Its predictive modeling capability enables forward-looking analytics that indicate which jobs need re-skilling versus up-skilling, and the exact skill pathways to move people to a brighter work future.”

Many other programs are working to use AI, Machine Learning, and other advanced technologies for analysis and improvement, including Vantage Labs , which is doing vital work in the area of AI and Machine Learning (more on that in a moment).

From these initiatives and others, it is clear that both educators and the industry want to see changes. It would be remiss if we did not mention the Internet of Education (IoE). This term was coined in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum meeting. It has quickly become a global movement defined as ”a global ecosystem of trust that enables networks of personalised and effective learning.”

The Learning Foundation has become the steward for this movement, and this article is a must-read overview of the state of play for IoE. The most important takeaway is that efforts are being made to integrate skills-based learning into formal environments .

Lifelong learning and corporate frameworks

Most work in skills-based learning is taking place outside formal environments. Due to increasing frustration with the ever-present and perhaps over-talked-about skills gap , many industries have developed their own internal education frameworks complete with their own micro-badging credentials .

This has driven the need for new segments in the post-secondary credential spectrum. HolonIQ has proposed a segmentation of the contemporary post-secondary knowledge and skills acquisition market – from peer-to-peer, short courses and badges through micro and alternative credentials to formal degrees. In so doing, they note that “defining the Global Micro and Alternative Credential Spectrum, beyond government-led qualification frameworks, is not straightforward. Different stakeholders bring very different perspectives, and this segmentation is by no means exhaustive.”

Short courses with digital badges , skill-specific bootcamps, and non-university-based certificates, and even professional certification and licensing are often as valuable or more so than a four-year degree, depending on the job.

While tech and cyber-security are often the leaders in this field, this actually creates another challenge. For example, when we look at IBM training , it is important to remember that although IBM credentials are “recognised around the world” that credential may not mean the same thing to Google, Amazon, or even Microsoft. The reason is the lack of a shared and established framework.

Measure twice, verify once?

The question of a common framework raises even more questions. The first is what we are trying to quantify and verify.

For example, a four-year degree means something. Universities have common syllabi and curricula around specific majors. While they may differ in some specific course areas, they mean something similar due to a common accreditation framework. A four-year degree in nursing, coupled with a Registered Nurse certification means the learner has at least been exposed to a certain type of courses with specified content. In short, there is a level of trust in the marketplace and an understanding of quality.

The only way to verify their “skills” in this area without on-the-job testing is to look at their grades, which is much too general in many cases. While institutions have tried to address this gap with various ratings (works well with others, participates in group projects, etc) the evaluations are often subjective, based on professor perceptions, and lack a standard and verifiable framework .

Yet that framework is exactly what is needed. Hard skills are much easier to verify through testing or demonstration. Even in those cases, alternatives must be established for skilled learners who simply don’t “test well.”

Yet it is extremely difficult to quantify and verify soft skills , human skills that are transferable. And what IBM may use to qualify someone may not relate to what Google understands to be the same, or similar qualification.

In other words, now that a learner has these certifications, what do they do with them? Can they be carried in a digital wallet or passport, verified, and in that way used as job currency ? How do we make these credentials meaningful to both the learner and the employer ? In other words, is there a framework that transfers?

There is a great deal of attention being paid to the transparency around micro-credentials . In the US, the non-profit organisation Credential Engine develops and maintains the Credential Transparency Description Language (CTDL), which provides the common language and “rules of the road” for how credentials, credentialing organisations, quality assurance information, and competencies are described both in the Registry and on the Web. This is also an area of focus for us here at Edalex with our Credentialate product. How do we provide a translational layer that exposes the personalised learning and evidence that sits behind and with the micro-credential. Concentric Sky with their Badgr Pro product has developed a learning pathway for customisable, stackable and shareable micro-credentials to direct and enable career aspirations.

This is all a part of developing a decentralised but verifiable framework in which well-defined skills and the micro-credentials that go with them are transferable, regardless of where the learning took place. What does this look like? The answer, unfortunately, is no one knows yet. Every aspect of micro-credentialing is still a work in progress. But there has been progress.

It seems somewhat ironic to try to end any overview of skills-based learning with a conclusion. Because the conclusion itself is filled with many questions and few answers.

Should even formal education be based on skills-based learning? The answer appears to be a conditional yes. What does industry-aligned mean, really? How can that be accomplished in a formal learning environment? How relevant are four-year degrees, and will they remain so?

“We need more connection and discussions between industries and Universities,” Noam Mordechay, VP Business Development at Gloat told the BBC. “On the job learning [must be] part of the curriculum.” Micro-credentialing allows employers to look beyond their typical candidate pools. In many ways, this is where the debate begins to change the conversation entirely.

Despite the push for rapid advancement and deeper conversation, there is still a long way to go. In some areas, non-traditional education is largely taking the place of degrees, including coding and software development. Will these emerging, targeted courses replace university degrees altogether? Research answers quite simply, “Not yet.” Degrees still mean something. Micro-credentials can enhance those degrees, making them more meaningful to employers. In other cases, stacking micro-credentials can be a substitute for the financial and time commitment required to get a four-year degree – and with more significant career outcomes .

Skills-based learning is the answer to bridging the skills gap . The real question is how we pull the where, when, how, and why together into a decentralised yet cohesive and verifiable framework that benefits learners, educators, and employers.

The only certainty in skills-based learning is change, and it’s not just about rapid development, but meaningful advancement as well. What will education look like a decade or even five years from now? No one knows, other than that it is sure to be much different than it is today.

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Credentialate is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials to students backed by personalised evidence at scale. By automatically extracting data from existing platforms and using an organization’s own assessment rubrics, we can objectively measure awarding criteria and validate its evidence.

By this same method we can automate the assessment, monitoring, promotion and validation of evidence-backed skills. For an institution, we provide the data and insights required to track skills and competencies across courses and entire programs.

Finally, we have decades of collective experience in educational technology and long-standing ties with global educational powerhouses. These solidify our ability to produce credible digital badges .

Credentialate assesses, monitors, promotes and validates learners’ attainment of evidence-backed skills, supporting the transition from learner to earner. It is a secure, configurable platform that assesses and tracks attainment of competencies and issues micro-credentials in a digital badge to students. If you’d like to learn more About Us and how we can work together, contact us or Schedule a Demo and let’s discuss!

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Credentials just got personal – Unleash the power of your skills data and personal credentials

Credentialate is the world’s first Credential Evidence Platform that helps discover and share evidence of workplace skills. Launched In 2019, it was initially developed in close collaboration with leading design partner, UNSW Sydney, in support of a multi-year, cross-faculty community of practice and micro-credential research project. Credentialate has continued to evolve at an accelerated pace, informed in partnership with educators and industry leaders from around the world. Credentialate provides a Skills Core that creates order from chaotic data, provides meaningful insight through framework alignment and equips learners with rich personal industry-aligned evidence of their skills and competencies.

Find out more at:  edalex.com/credentialate

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Why life skills-based education is a must-have?

Life Skills based Education development, feels like an art form, something we just can’t afford to overlook. Therefore, if you think about it – in our world today, having a good grip on English is pretty much essential. Hence, we need to develop the 34-life skills that are a must-have in the 21st century.

Our complete research on life/personal development skills

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Now, let’s talk about life skills-based education. In the evolving world we need to teach skills to our kids. Moreover, it’s the best investment for our kids. We help them teach skills to not only survive but thrive. And guess what? It’s not just about making money; it’s about finding that full expression in life – something we’re all striving for.

In addition, it doesn’t require heavy loads of equipment. Just skills which we have complete training, sessions, videos and books. Hence, you can easily start teaching life skills today.

Teaching them 1 thing at a time

Embedding personal development skills into education is like planting seeds for a better future. Furthermore, these skills are the water and sunlight that help us grow in every aspect of our lives.

The highlights

Conflict resolution, problem-solving, impact in real life.

Integrating life skills-based education is like prepping for a journey. Furthermore, it helps prepare us for the future. In addition, it’s training for the real world. That’s because, today the world demands more than just academic knowledge.

In wrapping this up, I can’t emphasize enough how crucial life skills-based education is. In addition, it’s more than just a path to economic success; it’s about enriching our lives in every possible way. With  personal development skills  as part of our toolkit, we’re not just going through life; we’re growing through it. Furthermore, it’s an investment in ourselves, one that pays off in ways beyond just financial. Therefore, here’s to embracing this journey and making the most of it!

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Importance of Life Skills in Education

• Updated on  
• Jan 4, 2024

Importance of Life Skills in Education : What exactly are life skills, and why are they important in education? If you are wondering about this, we have got the answer! Education is intended to improve the quality of life, not just your chances of getting a job. In this blog, we will discuss the essential life skills every person should have and even those recommended by the World Health Organisation. 

Table of Contents

• 1 What are Life Skills? 
• 2.1 Improves Self Awareness and Mental Health
• 2.2 Promotes Effective Decision-Making
• 2.3 Building Healthy Relationships
• 3 What is Life Skill Education?
• 4.1 General skills
• 4.2 Other Important Skills
• 4.3 High-level skills

What are Life Skills? 

Life skills education refers to the fundamental abilities that assist adolescents in developing the skills required to deal with life’s realities. Life skills enable people to learn new things, gain control over their behaviour, and make informed decisions. 

Life skills can be defined in a variety of ways, one of which is as follows: 

To interact with oneself and other people in and around one’s environment and to make a decision that requires high ability, one needs a certain set of social traits and personal qualities. One also needs these qualities to solve different kinds of problems. Additionally, life skills are the abilities needed to approach any situation positively in order to achieve the desired result. Adapting to society, promoting positivity in one’s own behaviour, and adopting a positive outlook on work are all ways to develop life skills.

The World Health Organisation has suggested a list of life skills. They are as follows:

• Self-awareness
• Thinking outside the box
• Thinking critically
• Resolving issues
• Making a decision
• Managing Stress Managing Emotions
• A good interpersonal relationship
• Communication that works

Also Read: Learning Skills For Students & Working Professionals

The list of these skills makes it clear that they are global in scope and include both intrapersonal and interpersonal skills. These skills are frequently divided into three major categories:

• Thinking skills include the capacity to come up with original ideas or to consider various solutions to a problem.
• Social Skills include understanding how to establish solid bonds with people, communicate clearly, and engage in fruitful social interactions.
• Emotional skills include knowing who you are, controlling your emotions, and feeling at ease in your own skin.

Why Teaching Life Skills in School Is Critical?

There are a lot of reasons as to why teaching life skills in school is critical. Some of the reason are mentioned below:-

Improves Self Awareness and Mental Health

Learning life skills help a student understand their true identity, who they are, and what they want from life. It makes them self-aware. They also become aware of the struggles of people around them.

Now that they become self-aware, the are better equipped to handle what they are going through and understand when they need help. This directly has an impact on students’ mental health. It improves quite a bit.

Promotes Effective Decision-Making

Everyday in our lives, we come across situations where effective decision making is essential. Learning life skills helps us in effective decision making. It makes our much more confident and in taking well informed decisions which can potentially be life changing

Building Healthy Relationships

One of the life skills is effective communication. And by learning that, students are able to speak clearly and much more assertively while still maintaining respect for other people’s opinions. What’s more is that the even learn good listening skills and are able to provide appropriate responses to them.

Learning life skills will also teach students to show empathy and give them a clear distinction between listening and hearing.This will help them avoid overreacting, misinterpretation, and miscommunication. Hence, they will be able to build a much more healthy relation with their family and friends along with building healthy workplace connections and even in the society as well.

What is Life Skill Education?

One of these skill types is life skills education. Through this, the kid learns how to live his life to the fullest and how to plan his daily activities in a methodical way. It is a style of education where the child is given the tools to become effective so that he can make decisions based on his intelligence and ability in challenging circumstances.

Must Read: Importance of Soft Skills for Career Growth

Common Life Skills For Everyone

Developing life skills is important, and each life skill has a specific application in life. Life skills include the following:

General skills

• Decision-making abilities: Everyone encounters situations from time to time where they must make choices that could have a significant impact on their lives. A person can learn how to make the right decision and then impart it to others by developing decision-making skills. They can make decisions in any situation that calls for a quick, firm decision.
• Self-awareness skills- Developing the Self-awareness skill allows one to be aware of his or her actions. They will be aware of their own performance and behaviours, allowing them to deal with any situation. A person will discover his or her feelings for things or for other people. It also helps them make sound decisions.
• Communication – You cannot express and make others understand your thoughts without effective communication, which can be achieved by honing your communication skills. It enables them to make their points clearly and convincingly to the audience. It also helps people gain confidence, and having effective communication skills is beneficial in a professional setting.

Other Important Skills

• The skill of having a negative tendency towards wrongdoing.
• Positive behaviour.
• Critical thinking.
• Society’s skills towards each other.

High-level skills

The following skills are covered under High-Level Skills.

• Social support.
• Standard of living in good health.
• Excellent warmth and high mental level.
• Way of thinking.
• Mental and physical relaxation
• Goal Setting and Problem Solving

Life skills instruct us on how to live a happy, positive life and how to manage our time effectively. Life skills are therefore crucial in our daily lives. It sharpens the capacity for situational adaptation and societal success in all spheres.

Related Reads:

1) What are 10 life skills?

Ten life skills are;-

• Critical thinking
• Decision Making
• Inter-personal relationship skills
• Problem solving
• Effective communication skills
• Creative thinking
• Self-awareness building skills
• Coping with stress
• Coping with emotions

2) What are the 4 C’s of life skills?

The 4 Cs of life skills are mentioned below:

• Communications
• Collaboration
• Creative Thinking

3) What are types of life skills?

The different types of life skills are mentioned below:-

 That’s all about Life Skills! If you have any questions related to universities, careers, or courses to study abroad, let Leverage Edu be your helping hand.

Shagun Bhardwaj

Shagun has 2+ years of experience in SEO, Creative Copy Writing and Social Media content and has written content on ed-tech, finance, lifestyle, architecture and other niches. Professionally trained in journalism, All her works are infused with a passion for writing!!

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Close your textbook and go outside: How ’place-based learning’ connects lessons to real life

Future science and social studies teachers visited a north portland neighborhood to create a lesson plan on highway development.

On an overpass in North Portland overlooking Interstate 5, Kathryn Nock and Jordan Stokes are taking stock of the neighborhood, including nearby Harriet Tubman Middle School.

What do they observe? What does the area smell like? What does it sound like?

“It’s kind of hard to hear, huh?” Nock says over the sounds of cars and trucks rumbling under their feet. It smells like exhaust.

Nock scribbles notes on a clipboard, observations of both the natural and human environment around them.

Nearby, two other pairs of college students discuss their surroundings.

They’re all future teachers, graduate students in Lewis & Clark College’s Masters of Teaching program, exploring North Portland with their professors Liza Finkel and Cari Zall.

Aidan Hanley, left, and Cooper Bulens, right, take notes of their observations on an overpass over Interstate 5 during a place-based lesson March 13, 2024. Hanley and Bulens are teaching candidates in the Lewis & Clark graduate school.

Elizabeth Miller / OPB

This is their classroom today, examining the human and nonhuman impacts of the upcoming I-5 expansion project on Tubman and the North Portland neighborhood surrounding it. The goal is to give these graduate students a real-life way to incorporate what’s called “ place-based education ” into their teaching by participating in a lesson themselves.

Stokes, a future social studies teacher, says place-based lessons show students that what they’re learning is relevant to their environment and their community.

“When you have local, real examples of how these different things interplay and affect people’s lives, I think that’s really powerful,” Stokes said. “I think that connects and makes them [students] want to learn more.”

Place-based learning connects what students learn in the classroom or in a textbook with real-world events. For teachers, leaving their classroom provides opportunities and challenges, from creating memorable and relevant ways for students to become more involved in their communities to navigating the logistics of planning a field trip. The Lewis & Clark trip, led by Finkel and Zall, gives teaching candidates at the school a chance to learn about creating a place-based lesson before they get into their own classroom.

Finkel directs the secondary Master of Arts teaching program at Lewis & Clark and advises science and math teaching candidates. Zall is a Lewis & Clark faculty member who advises social studies teaching candidates.

Finkel and Zall agree — you can’t teach science and social studies just by showing a sample under a microscope or reading from a history textbook. Getting out of the classroom can be a way to better engage students.

Finkel’s group of science teachers has been talking all year about how to incorporate local issues into teaching science. Her class has discussed the Klamath River dam removal — how they’d teach it, what’s the science in the story, and what the social dimension of the story is.

Their field trip to North Portland provided an opportunity to get out and explore those answers through another topic: the I-5 expansion project’s effect on a community.

“[It] seemed like a really really good example to get them out and be in a place where they could not just read about a problem but actually physically experience what it’s like to be in this place where people’s lives and wellbeing, and the lives of the plants and everything around it are being affected by decisions that people are making around changing the environment,” Finkel said.

Finding social studies and science in the widening of a freeway

Standing across the street from Harriet Tubman Middle School, Madi Pastores points out a freeway sign she can see in the distance.

“I’m from Oregon but honestly, I’m not very knowledgeable of the Portland area, and so actually seeing what the space looks like and feels like is so different from what I can imagine it to be when I’m reading it,” she said.

Pastores is studying to be a social studies teacher. As she walks down North Flint Avenue with future science teacher Max Marckel, the sound of the I-5 freeway beneath them becomes even louder.

Madi Pastores, left, and Max Marckel, right, are graduate students at Lewis & Clark. The future teachers are exploring how human development impacts a community as part of a place-based lesson in a North Portland neighborhood.

Tubman reopened in 2018 after Portland Public Schools spent millions of dollars in air quality system improvements to the school. Discussion of a possible I-5 expansion impacting the school has swirled for almost as long as the school has been open, prompting years of student-led protests and a back-and-forth between PPS and state officials.

Now in 2024, the I-5 Rose Quarter Improvement Project is moving forward and Tubman will have to move. District leaders haven’t announced where the school’s 300 students will go.

The I-5 project is part of a long legacy of decisions that have harmed Black residents in Portland living in the Albina neighborhood. Efforts are also underway to reclaim and redevelop the area by covering I-5 and purchasing the nearby PPS headquarters building.

To prepare for the Lewis & Clark field trip, Finkel and Zall sent the graduate students some reading on the neighborhood, the freeway expansion, and how nature is impacted by development .

Those readings and an essential question lead the conversation.

“Our essential question is, how can we teach about how human development impacts a community or a neighborhood — both the human part of the neighborhood and the more than human part of the neighborhood?” Zall asked the students.

The graduate students — three in the social studies teaching program and three in the science teaching program — shared some initial ideas for how they might approach a place-based lesson in the area.

“What value do we place in infrastructure development? What value do we place in education and the students that live in and are part of a community compared to more space for cars?”

“What primary sources [do] we have to actually see what changes have happened over the course of development?”

“Who benefits, and what is the cost, and who is bearing the cost of the widening?”

FILE: The I-5 freeway is seen through the fencing at the back of Harriet Tubman Middle School in North Portland, April 9, 2021.

Kristyna Wentz-Graff / OPB

“The idea is to have them really apply this experience that they’ve had today with some readings beforehand, the observations, the questions we’ve asked to actually create something they could at least begin to think about using with their students,” Finkel said.

After spending time observing the environment, the future teachers got together and talked about what their lessons might look like. They drafted lesson plans and talked about all of the different topics and ideas that could connect to a place-based lesson in North Portland.

Development, modernization, capitalism, the changes in wildlife all came up as ideas. The graduate students also noted how other sources like air quality data or old photos could add to a lesson about the neighborhood.

All of the students are currently student-teaching in high schools across the Portland metro area. Some are miles away from North Portland and suspect it might be difficult for their students to understand how complicated and problematic a freeway expansion could be.

“Most of them won’t have the context of that continual displacement, centuries of displacement in the community,” said Jordan Stokes, who wants to teach social studies.

These future teachers are also thinking about and framing their lessons with a social justice lens. It’s part of their Lewis & Clark teacher training.

“Even when it gets down to the nitty gritty of science and social studies content, they’re still up there thinking, ‘what are the social justice questions, the equity issues, the access issues, what are those?’” Finkel said.

Building informed citizens through learning locally

A 2023 review of research on place-based education found expected outcomes of this practice include environmental awareness, positive attitude to a specific place or environment, critical thinking skills, and understanding of social justice principles.

Nock wants her future students to be able to critique the world around them.

“My goal for students is to make them start thinking about things in a more complicated way, even if it’s uncomfortable,” Nock said.

Part of that means teaching how connected science is to everything.

“If you study biology or life science, it’s not only happening in Antarctica or in an old growth forest, biology is happening right here on the sidewalk next to this cement, or right here where these invasive species are crawling in,” she said.

She said it’s also about teaching students how science is affected by power, control and people’s decisions.

Lewis & Clark graduate students Jordan Stokes, left, and Kathryn Nock, right, give feedback on classmates’ lesson plans. Stokes and Nock were part of a group of future social studies and science teachers wrapping up a lesson on place-based learning.

Place-based learning is not a new concept, especially in Oregon. The statewide Outdoor School program is one example, a long-running program that gets middle school students out of the classroom and into forests, watersheds, and other natural areas to learn about science. Portland’s Cottonwood School of Civics and Science, a small public charter school, puts place-based learning at the center of its curriculum .

For social studies teachers, it can also be a way to keep lessons local, and root potentially controversial concepts in concrete examples. At a time when feeling safe as a teacher can depend on where you live , professors suggest the local focus may help avoid criticism that what students are learning might be too political.

“The more that teachers are prepared to be as local as possible… the more teachers know how to do that… the less the fear is around having pushback from outside, making claims about what you’re teaching or the content of what you’re teaching,” Zall said.

Zall and Finkel hope their place-based experience can also teach their graduate students that lessons can be anywhere and connect to just about anything.

Finkel mentions a recent story she heard about cherry farmers in Oregon . She imagines a science teacher in an affected community could use that example instead of something in a textbook.

Lewis & Clark College social studies teaching candidate Madi Pastores looks at a lesson plan her classmate put together on how development impacts a neighborhood. Pastores was one of six graduate students on a field trip to a North Portland neighborhood last month.

“We can teach all the same concepts if we teach about cherries as if I give you the very boring, you know, plant biology lecture that I was gonna give you tomorrow,” Finkel said.

Field trips can be a memorable learning experience for students. But they can also be challenging to plan and find financial support for, especially as school districts struggle to balance their budgets .

The trip to Tubman is just one example of a place-based lesson. Finkel and Zall hope it’s something the future teachers can adapt to their own communities.

Finkel and Zall also hope the interactions between science and social studies on the Tubman trip will continue, and lead them to collaborate across subject areas once they enter the workforce.

“The more that novice teachers and young teachers come out of teacher education with these ideas, they can bring them into their teaching spaces and really connect with the veteran teachers who are already there and offer some of these ideas about collaboration,” Zall said.

Finkel said there should be more collaboration in schools — something that teachers have to prioritize but that also requires support from administrators.

“Without bringing everyone together, we don’t tell the whole story,” Finkel said.

“We also don’t get kids engaged, and we teach kids that science isn’t connected to anything other than the vocabulary we learn in biology, or that history isn’t connected to anything other than memorizing the Constitution.”

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Tiny Tots Help Teach Real-Classroom Concepts

Monday, Apr 08, 2024 • Written by Monique Bird :

Dr. John Romig, an assistant professor of special education, recently begun inviting his young children to campus to help UTA students learn. Among the concepts, “SPED 4301: Strategies for Teaching Individuals with High Incidence Disabilities: Reading and Writing” teaches UTA students to explicitly teach basic reading and writing skills and administer curriculum-based measurements – a method of monitoring a child’s progress – as that child learns to read and write.

Often lacking children to work with, the UTA students were typically asked to practice with one another. However, starting last year with a campus visit from now 5-year-old Jack, Romig’s students can train in more meaningful ways. 

“Having a real kid made the practice more authentic because he made mistakes like real kids make,” said Romig. “When they practice with each other, they don't make the mistakes that a kid would make. Because they each got to practice with him, they were able to see how his scores fluctuated from administration to administration, discuss why that might be happening, and learn about various data principles.”

The unique project is becoming a small tradition.

The latest visit in March marked Jacks’ third campus visit and 3-year-old Will’s first visit.

“Textbook reading tells me what I’m going to be doing or learning, but I don’t see how it’s going to happen in real life,” continued Tillman. With the kids’ visits, “I get to see how the student is not always going to give me the response that the textbook has.”

During the lesson, the UTA students got hands-on practice teaching phonemic awareness to Will. For Jack, Romig asked his class to teach him a lesson using scripted activities in the textbook, “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.” The goal was to help Jack develop the skills needed for a strong reading foundation – phonics, fluency, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and comprehension – as well as writing, Romig told his classroom.

“Writing is not one of the five building blocks, but research shows that if you can spell a word then you can read it,” added Romig. “And you can read every word you can spell, but it doesn’t work the other way around.”

“I love the idea of having the lessons be scripted,” said Tillman. “Being a first-time teacher, I’m feeling very nervous about what I am supposed to be doing.”

Separately, Romig had his students practice collecting data to monitor Jack and Will’s progress.

“Collecting this data is kind of cognitively overwhelming,” added Romig. “You have to read standardized instructions, time the student, listen to what they are saying, and record their responses. So, it's challenging for beginning teachers to keep it all straight. The practice was for them to become more comfortable with administering and scoring the assessments.”

Romig's students, who are pursuing special education teacher certification through UTA’s Bachelor of Science in Education, also get experience with content planning, curriculum development, instruction, assessment, and data collection for elementary and secondary students with mild disabilities.

As for the kids’ thoughts on the activity, Romig said his sons’ experiences on campus have been exciting.

“They took a little while to warm up to the students at the beginning, but they definitely enjoyed it in the end,” Romig said. “Jack still talks about ‘the college students with the letters,’ as he calls them.” 

What's the secret to Switzerland's status as a global talent hub?

Switzerland is a powerhouse in attracting multinationals and creating, attracting and retaining individual talents. Image:  PhoHenrique Ferreira on Unsplash

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Stay up to date:, jobs and skills.

• Switzerland has once again been named the world’s most talent-competitive country, according to two different reports.
• This pristine Alpine country offers a high quality of life, including excellent education and employment prospects.
• What can other countries learn from Switzerland about becoming a global talent hub?

Another year, another occasion for Switzerland to shine when it comes to top talent. In 2023, this tiny Alpine country ranked first, again, in two global reports – The Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2023 and the IMD World Talent Ranking . It also ranked first in quality of life, according to the most recent Human Development Report from the UN, and managed to retain first place for the 13th consecutive year when it comes to innovation, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 2023 Innovation Index.

It is the high quality of life in Switzerland that helps to attract – and retain – top talent. And the talent creates innovation - which powers industry and economy, in a synergistic loop creating value for everybody and thus the high quality of life.

Yes, there is nature – the picturesque Alps, clear lakes and postcard-pretty hills with grazing cows. But this nature wouldn’t have stayed this pristine, and the air wouldn’t have been that clean, were it not for the government's efforts, decade after decade, ensuring the country’s economic development in parallel with environmental conservation and commitment to sustainability.

Have you read?

Skills first: 6 success factors for recruiting and developing talent, growth and jobs at davos 2024: what to know, adopting a 'skills-first' approach could help more than 100 million people worldwide get better jobs.

These aspects attract top global talent as well as multinationals, drawn by the business-friendly culture of political stability and legal transparency, commitment to intellectual property protection and free-market principles. Global companies establish their presence here and tap into the vast pool of professionals, enabling them to develop further and, in a synergistic way, contribute to Swiss society and to Europe. As for domestic companies, the country’s strong export business focus is the driving force when it comes to innovation, ensuring that they are competitive globally.

Investing in and nurturing future talent

Overall, it’s been a strategic combination of policies. A stable economy is one; then, a world-class education system and mandatory health insurance enable access to top-notch medical services.

In addition to paying attention to sustainability, the Swiss are also very conscious of work-life balance and value their personal time, as well as adequate social support and emphasis on safety and security. Add to the mix the importance of diversity and inclusion nationwide, and you’ve got great conditions for life satisfaction and professional growth.

Kids growing up here have access to top-quality education pretty much from the very beginning in a system that allows everyone to grow depending on their individual talents. When they are around 12, they may opt to apply to gymnasium, or Gymi – the academic track of secondary education that gets pupils ready for university. Another option is the unique vocational education and training (VET). Both approaches are excellent for the development of young talent. While Gymi places a lot of focus on intense schoolwork, the VET is a dual-track system that allows teens to combine classroom learning and internships as early as the age of 14.

When they turn 15, they can decide to do a full-time, year-long apprenticeship, a mix of on-the-job training and theoretical studies at a vocational school. Such early intro to the working world allows young people to enter the workforce seamlessly – and after three to four years, they can still apply to university if they wish.

There are a lot of universities to choose from. Switzerland has several world-class, top-ranking universities, including ETH and EPFL, as well as research institutions. Strong emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related subjects helps this nation nurture highly skilled professionals. Once they graduate, young people enter a job market that offers robust infrastructure and the commitment of the Swiss government to innovation and research in general. Investment in research and development (R&D) is highly prioritised, leading to an an innovation-driven environment where creativity and collaboration thrive.

Collaboration between industry and academia

Collaboration is encouraged widely – between academia and industry, be it large companies, startups or spinoffs. Collaboration starts even before students graduate. For example, multinationals like IBM Research and others have programmes that see Master’s and PhD students get degrees following a dual academia-industry system. They dip their toes into the research culture of an industrial organization while still students and may end up on top of the ladder should a vacancy appear at the company when they graduate.

Programmes like these further amplify the "brain gain" of skilled graduates and established workers from abroad. For over half a century, Zurich Lab, part of IBM Research, has trained thousands of young people via partnerships with local universities. Many have gone on to win awards and lead projects on groundbreaking technologies. Nearly every year, one or more young people at the lab get nominated for MIT's prestigious "35 under 35" Innovators Award. Alain Vaucher , for example, a computational chemist who developed an AI system that puts together a chemical recipe for any molecule, won the award in 2022.

In a synergistic loop, the top-level experience young people get helps multinationals increase contributions to society – in Switzerland and overall in Europe. And it prompts more global companies to come to the country and tap into this vast reserve of highly skilled professionals. They come and start to appreciate the great work-life balance the Swiss culture offers – and they stay, in the process, helping to solidify the position of this Alpine country as a powerhouse in attracting multinationals and creating, attracting and retaining individual talents.

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“Stop Coddling Your Grown Child”: 21 Essential Life Skills That You Should Be Teaching Your Child Before They Leave for College

Posted: February 22, 2024 | Last updated: February 22, 2024

As your child prepares to leave the nest for college, there are certain life skills they need to master to thrive on their own. From learning how to do laundry to budgeting and cooking, these essential skills seem obvious, but many young adults are sent off to college without them.

Doing Laundry

Learning how to do laundry is a crucial skill for any college student. Start by teaching them how to separate colors and fabrics and the right temperature to use for each. Explain the importance of cleaning the lint trap in dryers and how to use laundry detergent properly.

Basic Cooking

Knowing basic cooking skills can save your child from a diet of instant noodles. Teach them how to cook simple, healthy meals like pasta, stir-fries, and salads. Emphasize kitchen safety, including handling knives and managing the stove.

Budgeting is key to managing college expenses. Show them how to track their income and expenses and the importance of saving. Discuss the dangers of credit card debt and impulsive purchases.

Time Management

Time management skills are vital for balancing study, work, and social life. Teach them how to prioritize tasks and use a planner or digital calendar. Stress the importance of setting aside time for studying and relaxation. Good time management can be the difference between success and burnout.

Cleaning and Housekeeping

A clean living space is essential for health and well-being. Teach them basic cleaning skills like dusting, vacuuming, and disinfecting surfaces. Show them how to maintain a clean bathroom and kitchen. Cleanliness plays a big role in making a good impression on roommates and friends.

Grocery Shopping

Teach them how to make a grocery list based on planned meals, compare prices, and select fresh produce. Explain the benefits of buying in bulk and choosing store brands to save money. Show them how to read nutrition labels to make healthier choices. “Grocery shopping on my own was a reality check on adulting,” shared an online commenter.

Public Transportation

Understanding how to navigate public transportation is essential in many college towns. Teach them how to read transit maps, use apps for schedules, and understand fare systems. Discuss the importance of being aware of their surroundings and personal safety while commuting.

Basic First Aid

Basic first aid knowledge can be a lifesaver in minor emergencies. Teach them how to treat cuts, burns, and sprains and when to seek professional medical help. Show them how to create and maintain a basic first aid kit. This skill is not just for them, but for helping others too.

Personal Hygiene

Good personal hygiene is crucial for health and social interactions. Discuss the importance of regular bathing, oral hygiene, and clean clothes. Teach them about skincare and the need for regular haircuts. As a commenter says, “Good hygiene goes a long way in making a good first impression.”

Communication Skills

Effective communication is key in both personal and professional life. Teach teens how to communicate respectfully and assertively, both in person and online. Discuss the importance of active listening and empathy in building relationships.

Basic Sewing

Knowing how to sew a button or fix a minor tear can save time and money. Teach them basic sewing skills and how to use a sewing kit. This is not just practical but also a great way to be self-reliant. Plus, it’s a useful skill for costume parties!

Dealing with Emergencies

Teach them how to respond to various emergencies, like power outages, fire alarms, and severe weather. Discuss the importance of knowing emergency contacts and evacuation routes. “Being prepared for emergencies gave me peace of mind when I lived on my own,” says an online commenter.

Understanding Insurance

Understanding basic insurance concepts like health, auto, and renter’s insurance is important. Teach them how to read and understand an insurance policy and the importance of keeping documents safe. This knowledge is crucial for protecting themselves and their belongings.

Networking and Socializing

Teach teens how to network and the importance of socializing in a healthy, balanced way. Discuss how to approach professors, join clubs, and attend campus events. Networking can lead to friendships, mentorships, and even job opportunities.

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Critical thinking and problem-solving skills are essential in and out of the classroom. Encourage them to think independently, question assumptions, and approach problems logically. These skills will help them navigate complex situations and make informed decisions.

Digital Literacy

Teach teens about online safety, using search engines effectively, and managing digital files. Discuss the importance of a professional online presence. As one commenter said, “Digital literacy is as important as reading and writing.”

Personal Safety

Personal safety is paramount. Teach teens about situational awareness, trusting their instincts, and basic self-defense. Discuss the importance of staying safe in social situations and understanding consent.

Stress Management

College can be stressful, so knowing how to manage stress is key. Teach them relaxation techniques, the importance of exercise, and healthy coping mechanisms. Discuss the value of seeking help when needed. Managing stress effectively can enhance their college experience.

Laundry Etiquette

In shared laundry facilities, etiquette is essential. Teach teens about respecting others’ laundry, not leaving clothes unattended, and cleaning up after themselves, which will keep the peace and foster a sense of community responsibility.

Cooking for Special Diets

Knowing how to cook for special diets is helpful if they or their friends have dietary restrictions. Teach them about vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and allergy-friendly cooking. This skill is not only considerate but also expands their culinary horizons.

Voting and Civic Engagement

Understanding the importance of voting and civic engagement is crucial. Discuss how to register to vote, the basics of local and national politics, and the importance of staying informed. “Voting for the first time made me feel like a true adult,” shared a commenter.

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Tuition Paid.

Earn up to 60 credit hours tuition free. No work or apprenticeship required! Available to Kentucky residents with a high school diploma or working on their GED that don’t already have an associates degree or higher.

Emergency Medical Services

Level up your life-saving skills. If you’re already a certified EMT, in 12 months, you could be a paramedic.

WHAT IS EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES?

Emergency Medical Services include Emergency Medical Technician, Advanced Emergency Medical Technician, and paramedic training. The EMT, AEMT, and paramedic programs meet the standards of the U.S. Department of Transportation National Standard Training and KCTCS-Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services (KBEMS).

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What are my degree, diploma, and certificate options, how do i pay for this.

Worry no more. With the lowest tuition in Kentucky, financial aid options, and a helping hand to guide you through the application process, BSCTC has you covered. BSCTC will help you reach your goals at a price that will not break the bank.

• Tuition & Cost
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• Paying For College
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What Else Do I Need to Know?

Accreditation status.

Big Sandy Community and Tech College Paramedic program has been issued a Letter of Review by the Committee on Accreditation of Educational Programs for the Emergency Medical Services Professions (CoAEMSP).

This letter is NOT a CAAHEP accreditation status, it is a status signifying that a program seeking initial accreditation has demonstrated sufficient compliance with the accreditation standards through the Letter of Review Self Study Report (LSSR) and other documentation. Letter of Review is recognized by the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) for eligibility to take the National Registry's Paramedic credentialing examination(s). However, it is NOT a guarantee of eventual accreditation.

Committee on Accreditation of Educational Programs for the Emergency Medical Services Profession (CoAEMSP) (214) 703-8445 www.coaemsp.org  (new window)

Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs 25400 US Highway 19 North, Suite 158, Clearwater, FL 33763

www.caahep.org  

Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services 500 Mero Street, 5th Floor 5SE32, Frankfort, KY 40601

Phone: 1 (866)-97KBEMS kbems.ky.gov  

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges 

1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, GA 30033

404.679.4500 https://sacscoc.org/  

Program Information

What is an emergency medical technician emergency medical technician (emt).

provides pre-hospital emergency care to acutely ill or injured patients. The EMT course (EMS 105) is offered during the fall and spring semesters and takes just 15 weeks. Course graduates are eligible to take the National Registry Emergency Medical Technician (NREMT) Examination upon completion. The program is six credits and is offered each semester as an evening course.

ABOUT OUR PROGRAM

• Big Sandy’s Emergency Medical Technician program recognizes the need for realistic, pre-hospital training.
• We have a fully equipped skills laboratory that provides both individual hands-on skills and hi-fidelity stimulation to bring to life the skills mastered.
• Our program combines academic and laboratory courses with high-technology simulation laboratory and field internship.
• You will gain the necessary cognitive knowledge, psychomotor skills, and affective behaviors to succeed as an Emergency Medical Technician.
• The program curriculum comes from the National EMS Education Standards set forth by the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services (KBEMS).

PROGRAM GOAL

To prepare competent entry-level Paramedics in the cognitive (knowledge), psychomotor (skills), and affective (behavior) learning domains with or without exit points at the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician, or Emergency Medical Technician, or Emergency Medical Responder levels.

APPLICATION PROCESS

• Apply for admission to Big Sandy Community & Technical college
• Complete a FAFSA application.
• Meet with an admission advisor and enroll in EMS 105.

ESTIMATED COST

• The estimated cost of the Emergency Medical Technician course is $1,220 (tuition & fees: $1,020
• Books, uniform, and supplies: $300

This information should not be considered a substitute for the KCTCS Catalog . You should always choose classes in cooperation with your faculty advisor to ensure that you meet all degree requirements

WHAT IS AN ADVANCED EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN

• An Advanced Emergency Medical Technician is an advanced level provider who functions as part of a comprehensive EMS response, community, health, or public safety system with medical oversight and is an important link from the scene into the healthcare system.
• Our program prepares students to perform interventions with the basic and advanced equipment typically found on an ambulance, including performance of focused advanced skills and pharmacological interventions that are engineered to mitigate specific life-threatening conditions, medical, and psychological conditions. Focuses on a targeted set of skills beyond the level of the EMT.
• The Advanced EMT certificate pathway is offered annually during the spring semester. It is a one semester course meeting two days a week, 8 hours a day.
• Course graduates are eligible to take the National Registry Emergency Medical Technician (NREMT) Examination upon completion.
• You must hold certification as an EMT either from the Kentucky Board of EMS, or for out of state individuals, you have your NREMT certification. 
• Big Sandy’s Advanced Emergency Medical Technician program recognizes the need for realistic, pre-hospital training.

The Advanced Emergency Medical Technician certificate program is a Selective Admissions program.

Students must follow all Selective Admissions steps to be considered for the program.

• Attend a pre-admission conference.
• Submit all documeationatoin needed on the pre-admission check list.
• Complete the online entrance exam with platinum testing.
• Once accepted into the program, meet with academic advisor, and register for the required classes.

Failure to submit all items on the pre-admission check list will invalidate the candidate application. For further information, please contact the EMS Program Coordinator.

PRE-ADMISSION CONFERENCE DATES FOR PRE-ADMISSION CONFERENCE

If you are interested in applying, you must attend a pre-admission conference. We will cover your most pressing questions to make sure this is a good fit for you. 

Candidates’ questions will be addressed at pre-admission conferences. Therefore, each candidate must attend a pre-admission conference prior to applying to the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician Program.

For more information regarding Advanced Emergency Medical Technician Admissions, please refer to the BSCTC Course Catalog.

WHAT IS A PARAMEDIC

• Paramedics provide pre-hospital emergency care to acutely ill or injured patients with an advanced level of knowledge and skill set.
• Program graduates are eligible to take the National Registry Paramedic (NRP) Examination upon completion.
• Paramedic program enrollment is limited, and students are required to be certified as an EMT before entering paramedic program coursework.
• After you are admitted to the college, you must also apply to the paramedic program. 
• Big Sandy’s paramedic program recognizes the need for realistic, pre-hospital training.
• Our program combines academic and laboratory courses with high-technology clinical instruction.
• You will gain the necessary cognitive knowledge, psychomotor skills, and affective behaviors to succeed as a Paramedic.

The Emergency Medical Technician—Paramedic certificate program is a Selective Admissions program.

Candidates’ questions will be addressed at pre-admission conferences. Therefore, each candidate must attend a pre-admission conference prior to applying to the Paramedic Technology Program.

For more information regarding Paramedic Technology Admissions, please refer to the BSCTC Course Catalog.

• The estimated cost of the paramedic certificate program is $8,970 (tuition & fees: $7,650 | books, uniform, and supplies: $1,400*).
• This estimate includes all courses (including pre-requisites) for the entire paramedic certificate program.
• The paramedic program is eligible for federal financial aid or the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship Program!
• Tuition is based on the in-state tuition rate. For more information about Big Sandy’s tuition and fees, please visit the Tuition and Fees webpage.
• All program costs are subject to change
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• May 1 @ 5:00
• May 9 @ 5:00

All meetings will take place on the Pikeville Campus in room S234.