Life Skills

Life Skills
A critical review of life skills education has drawn attention to the need to defi ne life skills, to identify which skills
are to be included in a curriculum and both why and how they should be taught.47 They propose that life skills
approaches need to be more educationally driven, building on educational processes that have ‘transformative
capacity’. A ‘whole-school approach’ is recommended with life skills curricula developed and reviewed as part of
wider curriculum reform. Life skills require skilled and motivated teachers and this in turn requires considerable
resources.
A review of life skills education in sub-Saharan Africa also highlights diffi culties in terms of defi ning life skills and
its introduction into the traditional, didactic and authoritarian style of teaching that is the norm in many schools in
poorer countries.48 The reviewers also point out that few life skills programmes in sub-Saharan Africa have been
rigorously evaluated. Assuming these diffi culties can be overcome, they recommend that life skills education begin
early in primary school, be taught by suitably trained teachers and become a separate topic rather than integrated
across the curriculum.
Some of the challenges associated with the implementation of life skills education are identifi ed in a study of an HIV
and AIDS life skills programme with secondary school students in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa.49 Evaluation discovered
a signifi cant increase only in relation to knowledge about HIV and AIDS in the intervention group. No effects
were reported on safe sex practices (condom use, sexual intercourse) or on measures of psychosocial determinants
of these practices, such as attitude and self-effi cacy. Process evaluation among teachers revealed that, while
some had implemented the programme in full (in terms of time spent, the number and content of lessons), others
did so only partially. Also teachers relied upon a didactic style more and reported comfort with teaching more factbased
rather than skill-based topics. The authors argue that, in addition to knowledge, positive attitudes and beliefs
about condom use, effective programmes need to include skills that address the more proximal determinants of
safe sexual behaviour, such as self-effi cacy beliefs and skills related to actual condom use, together with relevant
communication skills. In turn, this depends signifi cantly upon equipping suitably selected teachers with the ability,
skills and confi dence (and materials) to move away from information-giving to methodologies that engage students
through active student participation. The study draws attention to the need to address broader issues of school
reform such as school culture, communication between and among stakeholders, teacher effi cacy and behaviour.
46 Underhill