Life Skills Education for Adolescents

About this chapter

Life Skills Education for Adolescents defines life skills as psycho-social and interpersonal abilities — bundles of habits — that help adolescents face everyday problems with a positive attitude and lead a healthy, productive life. The chapter explains why adolescence (with its physical growth spurt, hormonal change, menarche in girls and spermarche in boys, mood swings, peer pressure and exposure to risky behaviours such as smoking, drug use, fighting and unsafe sexual contact) is the critical stage at which life skills must be taught. It then introduces the World Health Organization (WHO) list of ten core life skills, grouped into three families — (i) self-understanding and self-management (self-esteem, self-awareness, assertiveness, coping with stress, coping with emotions); (ii) knowing and living with others (effective communication, interpersonal relationships, empathy, conflict resolution); and (iii) dealing with issues and problems (critical thinking, creative thinking, decision-making, problem-solving). It also describes how CBSE introduced life-skills education from 2003-04 onwards and how UNESCO works with state governments through the infusion and direct approaches. CTET Paper I tests this through definition-level recall, WHO list questions, classroom-application items on each skill, RTE-linked teacher-role items, and decision-making and problem-solving step questions. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all three families at CTET depth.