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This report analyses the development of the Life Skills Initiative for young people in Uganda. This initiative seeks to strengthen health education in schools by developing pupils’ Life Skills, such as assertiveness, decision making and effective communication, to enable them to translate their health knowledge into practice. In the context of HIV/AIDS, Life Skills are seen as one of the young people’s principal protections against infection. Life Skills education requires a participatory, active learning approach, which presents a challenge to Ugandan schools with their huge classes and didactic teaching styles. The report explores how this challenge is being met, through the school system, and through other channels, including non‐government organisations, the mass media and the health services.

El Salvador’s youth have faced a climate of violence for decades. Schools have been identified as the most cost-effective ways to help students develop the life skills they need to prevent violence. This study examined the potential role of a physical education (PE) program taught by some of the first Salvadoran teachers to be trained to foster life skills through PE within schools.

Fourteen schools that had hired a PE teacher trained in life skills-based PE volunteered to participate in the study. Semi-structured interviews with the school director, PE teacher, and a focus group of students at each school were conducted.

Interviews were content analyzed and potential themes were initially placed into one of three life skills categories using a deductive analysis based upon the World Health Organization’s (WHO) (2002) three categories of life skills: (i) Coping and Self-Management; (ii) Communication and Interpersonal; (iii) Decision Making/Problem Solving. Then, using an inductive analysis, various themes within each life skills category were identified. The findings revealed that participants in the study identified the role that PE provides in developing life skills in each of the three categories and many identified the importance of these life skills to prevent violence both in and out of schools.

Findings from this study highlight the important role that schools play in the development of life skills and the prevention of youth violence. PE in particular offers a promising approach due to its applied nature and opportunity for students to learn through doing and the application of life skills in a safe manner. The findings also support the importance of trained PE teachers to deliver such programs.

Central America has and continues to be a region with high levels of youth violence. Given that PE is a mandatory school subject in Salvadoran schools (and in other Central American countries), shifting the focus toward a life skills-based approach to PE offers educators an opportunity to address the country’s number one public health concern which is youth violence. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind in El Salvador to explore the role of PE as it relates to youth violence and can help in future curricular revisions in schools and the development of degree programs at local universities.

Literature suggests that less attention has been paid on teacher's and head of the school's outlook on when to introduce life skills education, which are the most important to be focused and developed first, and their opinion on effort already made to develop life skills among the students. Hence, the present study aims to focus on the teacher's and head of school's perspective with regard to the three most important life skills which need to be developed at the school level.

For the present study, a digital survey tool was developed (Google Form) and circulated across all the states to the Government and private school teachers and heads of school and access of the Google form was open from April 26 to May 7, 2022. A total of 770 school heads/teachers responded the survey spread over 17 different states. To address the objectives of the paper, descriptive and inferential analysis are carried out.

In the participant's view, self-awareness, effective communication and problem solving are found as the top most, second and third most important life skills to be focused respectively. Results reveal that the region, type of schools and gender of the respondents have no significant role to play in the choice of top three most important life schools to be focused the first. However, designation of the respondent's (teacher/head of the schools) and years of work experience in schools are found significantly associated with the choice of top three life skills. Study concludes that as various research studies have highlighted that all the life skills are inter-related so if the authors prioritize at least three identified top most first so others will be some and other way will start developing in parallel and can be taken up subsequently.

This study is based on digital data collected from the teachers and headmasters based on the survey link circulated through different communication channels. Also, sample is not uniform due to varied response rate across the states and therefore number of respondents participated in the survey varies significantly from one state to another state. The findings emerged from this study cannot be generalized at state level. Even generalization at national level needs to be done carefully as samples are not representative. However, this research demonstrates an interesting fact and will help teachers to prioritize top three skills to be implemented first followed by others.

This will help the teachers and heads of schools to use the top three skills that they need to insist by all means at the school level. This will also help the policy makers to keep note of the perception of the teaching community on life skills.

This paper will bring focus on the importance of life skills to the education fraternity.

Less or no attempt has been made to understand teachers/head of school's perspective on initiation of life skills and which are the most important skills to be prioritized first. Hence, the study comes with an original concept.

The study aims to review the existing theories and literature related to life skills education for adolescents to construct a model portraying the inter-relatedness between these variables. This study discerns the inferences from the studies conducted earlier to propose various aspects to be considered for future research and interventions targeting the effectiveness of life skills education for adolescents.

Prolific examination of numerous theoretical and empirical studies addressing these variables was carried out to formulate assertions and postulations. Deducing from the studies in varied streams of education, public health, psychology, economics and international development, this paper is an endeavor toward clarifying some pertinent issues related to life skills education.

Although there is abundant evidence to encourage and assist the development of life skills as a tool to achieve other outcomes of interest, it is also important to see life skills as providing both instrumental and ultimate value to adolescents. Quality life skills education needs to be intertwined with the curriculum through the primary and secondary education, in the same way as literacy and numeracy skills.

The present study has important implications for educators and policymakers for designing effective life skills education programs. Additionally, this paper provides a three-step model based on Lewin’s three step prototype for change, to impart life skills trainings to adolescents through drafting pertinent systems. This will help in imparting quality life skills education to adolescents and raising them to be psychologically mature adults.

This study’s purpose was to determine the youth leadership life skills of Texas 4-H, FFA, and FCCLA members participating as school tour guides. Descriptive characteristics were evaluated to determine those affecting leadership life skills development. School tour guides participating in the exit-meeting during the 2004 San Antonio Livestock Exposition were asked to complete the questionnaire. This resulted in 1,691 responses and a 94% response rate. The questionnaire was a 28-item survey that was based on the scales: working with groups, understanding self, communicating, making decisions, and leadership. Conclusions showed that school tour guides were developing leadership life skills. The most influential descriptive characteristics were gender, previous leadership experiences, and ethnicity. Females and those participants who had previous leadership experiences reported stronger perceptions of their leadership life skills. In addition, African and Asian Americans, Hispanics, and Anglos all had stronger perceptions of their leadership life skills when compared to Native Americans.

The geographic, economic and social mobility of people today requires that many must be able to adapt or adopt various life styles in accordance with their surroundings and integrity. Today, many people need to be multi‐cultural so they can succeed and survive in ethnic, commercial and other milieux in rapid sequence, often each day. A Canadian Life Skills programme has been designed to help such people adopt a problem solving approach to managing their lives.

The purpose of constructing the collage and stimulus instruments was to assess the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme. The collage is a compilation of pictures and concepts representing the different skills included in the life skills learning programme, and the pictures and concepts acted as the stimulus instruments. Subsequently, the collage and stimulus instruments were used in a first assessment directly after the learners had completed the life skills learning programme. The development of the data category classification enabled the researcher to evaluate and interpret the responses of the learners in the assessments and to ascertain to what extent the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme were attained. It was found that the collage and stimulus instruments were effective in assessing the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of the life skills learning programme. However, it must be noted that the findings on the behavioural changes in the learners again highlighted the difficulties in assessing the affective domain in life skills.

Youth leadership life skills are the “development of life skills necessary to perform leadership functions in real life” (Miller, 1976, p.2). A model developed by Kapostasy indicates life skills should be taught through FFA (Staller, 2001). Thus, it is important to evaluate youth leadership life skills developed to determine the effectiveness of leadership curriculum and its quality and impact. This research study surveyed Arkansas FFA members after attending the 2012 Arkansas Leadership Conference to determine the leadership life skills developed while at the conference. Furthermore, this study looked at relationships between FFA participants and FFA participation with youth leadership life skills and provides recommendations for future research and for practitioners.

This research was motivated and initiated by a request from industry to present a life skills learning programme to supplement young workers’ training. Subsequently, the dilemma faced by facilitators and trainers to assess the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of a life skills learning programme provided the impetus to develop an alternative assessment method – the collage and the stimulus instruments. A model developed by the researchers guided the development of the alternative assessment method and the stimulus instruments. Taking into account the demands, requirements and characteristics of life skills, a collage consisting of ten pictures and ten verbal concepts was developed to assess the learners’ attainment of the learning outcomes of a particular life skills learning programme. The life skills learning programme was presented to 18 artisans employed in industry. The selected material in the collage depicts more than one life skill and reflects the learning outcomes of the programme. The article is published in two parts. Part 1 is outlined above. The second part of the article will report on the outcomes of the application of the assessment instrument with the subject group of young workers.

Tackling high reoffending rates in England and Wales is of significant political interest, with education and training being viewed as an important mechanism to achieve change. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of a small empirical study examining a life skills programme delivered in a Category C prison in the West Midlands.

The study used a multi-method approach incorporating observations of two modules, four focus groups with prisoners enrolled on the programme, questionnaires with programme completers, and semi-structured interviews with staff.

The findings indicate that life skills are an important component in rehabilitation. More specifically, developing the necessary tools to assist prisoners in everyday life, such as recognition, interpretation, reflection, response, and planning is fundamental to rehabilitation.

A limitation of this study was that only prisoners currently at this Category C prison were included. This could be complemented by the inclusion of more participants who had completed the programme; however, access and data protection considerations limited the study to one location.

The key message of this study is that without addressing basic life skills, education and vocational rehabilitation is severely limited.

To reduce reoffending rates, it is important to conceive rehabilitation in broader terms, not simply in relation to education and vocational training.

This paper offers insight into an unreported area of good practice in prison rehabilitation provision.