Empowering Girls Through Sport: A Gender Transformative Approach to Life Skills?

From the Pacific Islands to Sub-Saharan Africa, development organizations have positioned sport as an ideal tool for building important life skills that can be transferred from the playing field to day-to-day realities. Sport has also been positioned as a key space for girls’ empowerment, especially in contexts where gender norms limit girls’ mobility and/or their opportunities to engage in activities stereotyped as being for boys. But an approach that solely focuses on empowering girls through sport by depositing in her useful life skills ignores the structural conditions that have disempowered her in the first place. This chapter examines the gender transformative potential of sport-based life skills programs by exploring the skills that are being targeted, especially for girls’ empowerment, by the sport for development (SFD) community. The chapter then examines the implications for our understanding of life skills approaches to gender transformative social change, particularly as it pertains to addressing the conditions that have held girls back.

Concluding Thoughts on Life Skills Education for Youth

This chapter summarizes the answer to the motivating question for this book: “Which life skills are important, for whom, and how can they be taught?” Drawing on research reflected in the preceding chapters, I highlight three broad themes. First, that teaching life skills helps marginalized adolescents in particular – but should not put the onus of overcoming marginalization squarely on their shoulders. Second, that consensus seems to be emerging that a cluster of social and emotional skills and cognitive abilities like critical thinking are particularly important for success. Third, that the way in which life skills are taught matters as much as which skills are taught. I also reflect on three big barriers that we need to address if we really want to advance the agenda of life skills. First, governments may not embrace the transformative change we want to see. Second, life skills programs are complex to implement and to measure. Lastly, we cannot ignore the risk of unintended consequences on the path to developing life skills. I suggest that each of these challenges is worth contending with to give youth of today a fighting chance to deal with the expected and as-yet unimagined challenges of tomorrow.

Life Skills Education for Urban Youth in Honduras and Guatemala: A Capability Analysis of the Sports-Based Job Training Program A Ganar

Drawing upon an extensive case study of a sports-based, life skills job training program for at-risk youth in Honduras and Guatemala, this chapter examines how program participants described the process of building skills, and how, if at all, this skill-building led to greater well-being. Second, it asks, to what extent are these experiences of program participants aligned with theories of education within the capability approach? These questions are addressed through a qualitative case study that was embedded within an experimental design (a randomized control trial) that took place over 5 years in urban areas of Honduras and Guatemala. The analysis suggests that the combination of exposure to new ideas and information in the three phases of the A Ganar program, coupled with concrete opportunities to test out such ideas, enabled youth to experience changes in their attitudes and behaviors around work, around themselves, and to develop new relationships and friendships. Based on these empirical results, the chapter identifies several elements that might better inform life skills education research and practice in s in the future. These include: (1) conceptualizing life skills as preconditions of capabilities (some of which might be better classified as values); (2) conceptualizing life skills as both ends and means of interventions, and (3) giving more consideration to the conversion factors, meaning the ability to convert resources into functionings, that limit the robustness of capabilities that life skills programs develop.

Age-Specific Life Skills Education in School: A Systematic Review

Strengthening life skills is a popular approach for prevention and health promotion in schools. It aims to empower students to deal effectively with the demands of everyday life by improving self-regulation, making informed decisions, and building supportive social relationships. By addressing various health-related topics such as friendship, sexuality, violence, or substance use, life skills education has the potential not only to teach students how to act responsively regarding their health and well-being, but also to build a comprehensive understanding of the biological, psychological, and social factors influencing their individual development. However, little is known about whether the contents of life skills programs differ depending on student age, either in terms of the set of skills promoted or the influencing factors on health that are the focus. This systematic review addressed this gap by analyzing evaluated school-based life skills programs regarding age-specific targeted life skills, underlying theoretical frameworks, and effectiveness. The analysis, following the PRISMA guidelines, was based on longitudinal evaluation studies published between 2007 and 2020, which were retrieved from six electronic databases, and referred to eighteen programs. Results showed that programs were mostly implemented in adolescence and that the targeted life skills shifted from a more behavioral-affective focus in childhood to a broader set of life skills targeted in adolescence which emphasized social and sociocultural influencing factors on health. Little evidence was available on the effectiveness of the programs on life skills development. Ultimately, life skills education promotes health-related self-regulation, especially in adolescence. However, further research is needed to clarify how to achieve sustainable effects in the development of life skills, both in childhood and adolescence.

DEVELOPMENT TRENDS AND SUSTAINABILITY OF THE LIVING VALUES AND LIFE SKILLS PROGRAMS IN VIETNAMESE SCHOOLS

Living values and life skills education has been popularly carried out in Vietnam over the two decades. A large number of in-depth studies on living values and life skills have been conducted and many of the research findings applied. Various living values and\or life skills education programs have been translated and piloted in Vietnamese schools nationwide. This paper reviews the existing approaches, concepts and education programs of living values and life skills in the period of 2000-2020. Previous approaches tend to be mainly separate: living values education or life skills education, very few programs clearly integrate the living values education with life skills education. The review results show that currently the integrated approach to the education of living values and life skills is selected by many educational programs. The article also analyzes the development trends and sustainability of those programs in Vietnam.