Life Skilling of Teachers and the challenge of training teachers in life skills

• In Event: “Lessons of Life skills education implementation and advocacy in Tanzania”

Proposal

Life skills, socio-emotional or 21st century skills are broadly defined as “ a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner. Life skills may be directed towards personal actions or actions towards others, as well as towards actions to change the surrounding environment to make it conducive to health.”(WHO). These critical skills are important for people of all ages and stages of development from infancy to adulthood. Life skills have been linked to positive health, education and labor market outcomes (World Bank, 2013) worldbank.org/gender/agi

Nurturing life skills, both at home and school, must be more than conveying of information. The delivery must be interactive, experimental and include games and role plays (World Bank, 2013). A teacher or trainers’ role is therefore critical. Like other subjects, in order to be able to teach life skills, teachers need to understand the content and the pedagogical approaches necessary to develop these skills in the students. The point of departure for life skills education from other academic or cognitive competencies is the fact that teachers of life skills need to go beyond understanding the skills to “embodying” them.

A local organization in Zanzibar working to accelerate progress in health, education and livelihoods, has been implementing projects aiming to improve the quality of education in Zanzibar. At the center of the organization’s education strategy are teachers. The strategy targets students’ STEM and 21st century skills in order for them to develop skills they need for them to succeed beyond school. The 21st century skills in focus are communication, collaboration, initiative taking, creativity and innovation. In order to impart these skills to the learners, the organization needed to first understand to what degree teachers themselves embodied these skills. Following this assessment, the organization designed training programs that would not only train teachers the pedagogical approaches but also target on nurturing the skills in the teachers themselves.

This paper presents the findings from the assessment of the level of teachers’ life skills capacities. It will also share key lessons on this novel approach of nurturing skills to teachers while also teaching them pedagogical skills. The paper will help shed light on the conference’s third theme focusing on School Systems and Educators to improve learning in formal and informal settings particularly looking at how we should go about preparing teachers to educate students in uncertain, insecure moments, where competing values, pressures, and agendas exceed the traditional scope of the profession.

Author

• Ali Bakar Aman, Milele Zanzibar Foundation