The Ministry of Education in Malawi introduced Life skills Education program with the intention to empower children with appropriate information and skills to deal with social and health problems affecting the nation including the fight against HIV infections. This study investigates factors affecting the implementation of the Life skills programme in four schools in the Zomba District, Malawi. A curriculum is not implemented within a contextual vacuum. I draw on Cornbleth‟s (1990) notions of the structural and social contexts to study the contexts of the school organisation, classroom environment and social-economic-political context in which the curriculum is implemented. Within this framework, I use Whitaker‟s(1993) identification of key role players in curriculum implementation, to consider the specific ways in which teachers, learners, principals, district officials and the community affect the implementation of this curriculum within the schools I chose to study. Findings suggest that the implementation of Life skills is constrained by a variety of social and structural contextual factors. Some of the crucial factors hampering the teaching of Life skills are the poor conditions under which teachers are working. Teachers are paid very little salaries and this affects their motivation to teaching making some of these teachers giving most attention to what they perceive as priority subjects only such as Maths and Languages at the expense of Life skills. The cascade model of training leaves the responsibility of training Life skills teachers to school principals who are not subject specialists. This adds to their already highly pressured roles in terms of managing their schools, resources and learners. The training of teachers in life skills curriculum involves two days of training. This short duration of the training is not sufficient to develop understanding of content and empower teachers to mediate sensitive topics with 3 confidence. This model of training also undermines professional responsibility of each teacher to empower themselves to become subject experts in the subjects they teach. The inaccessible language used within the Teachers‟ Guide contributes to the omission of areas of the curriculum by teachers who struggle to understand and teach certain topics. The case study shows that hunger experienced by learners affects their concentration in class and leads to frequent absences. It has been found that the Life skills curriculum is not supported by all sectors of the community. Certain teachers and their principals found a clash between rural communities‟ cultural beliefs and the Life skills programme. The prevalence of HIV/AIDS affects both the teachers of Life skills and their learners resulting in teachers feeling uncomfortable and reluctant to teach that which affect them and their learners. Some teachers believe that it is inappropriate to teach sexual matters to children of this age. This results in the teachers omitting the very issues that the Life skills curriculum has sought to address. Given these issues, the research finds significant challenges facing the implementation of the Life skills curriculum in Malawi and based on the findings, recommendations are made for improvement of the implementation of the Life skills program.

Thesis (M.Ed. (Education)) - Rhodes University, 2009. / A half-thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education (Environmental Education)

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 144-148).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-148). Also available in print.

Life skills education and training programmes, which offer skills to help people cope with everyday life, have in recent years become a highly popular method of intervention and prevention in social work. It is a proactive method and supports the developmental approach of social welfare. The research entailed the development, implementation and evaluation of the Personal and Interpersonal Life Skills Programme. The intervention research model was employed as foundation for the design and development of the programme and the ecological perspective as the theoretical framework. The study highlighted the school as an appropriate context within which to improve the life skills of learners. The main goal of the study was to develop and implement a personal and interpersonal life skills programme for Grade 7 learners in the senior phase of a school, and to evaluate whether participation in the life skills programme would lead to personal growth (self-empowerment) and social competence and thus contribute to the optimal social functioning of children in the classroom, school, family and community (capacity building). A descriptive design with a quasi-experiment, the one-group pre-test-post-test experiment, was used in this study. A non-parametric statistical test was utilized because the data was measured on an ordinal scale (Wilcoxon signed-rank test). The Life Skills Programme was implemented over twelve sessions, lasting about one-and-a-half hours, held twice weekly over a period of six weeks. Using experiential learning within the groupwork method, the programme was subsequently implemented with Grade 7 learners at a traditional black primary school in Pretoria and their ages varied from approximately 12 to 16 years. Forty learners constituted the sample in the study and a non-probability sampling procedure was used. In the school context it is expected that the social worker will include all learners in the classroom (classroom intervention). The sample was divided in six smaller groups with 5 to 7 learners in each group. The study found that the Personal and Interpersonal Life Skills Programme had a statistically highly significant effect (all items = p value ¡Ü 0.01) on the personal and interpersonal life skills development of the Grade 7 learners in the senior phase of the General Education and Training Band in the particular primary school. It is recommended that this intervention programme be implemented and facilitated by a social worker who is part of the multidisciplinary education support personnel. Copyright 2002, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Bender, CJG 2002, A life skills programme for learners in the senior phase : a social work perspective, MA dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-011222002-110633 / > / Thesis (MA (Social Work))--University of Pretoria, 2004. / Social Work and Criminology / Unrestricted

PhDPH / Department of Public Health / There is a growing concern over the rising cases of adolescent pregnancy, drug and substance abuse, poor academic performance, violence, high school dropout rate and HIV/AIDS prevalence among secondary school students. The grounds of these problems are considered to be related to inadequate Life Orientation Education which should equip the learners with psychosocial competencies, but the ability to make informed decision, solve problems, think creatively and critically, communicate effectively, build healthy interpersonal relationships is lacking among the youths (Dash, 2018). The purpose of the study was to develop strategies to facilitate the implementation of existing Life orientation curriculum in secondary schools of Limpopo province, South Africa. An exploratory sequential design was used in this study. This research design had three stages. In the first stage (1a) the researcher collected and analysed quantitative data. Based on the quantitative results, the researcher will then engage a second stage (1b), the qualitative phase, to test and make the general view of the initial findings. This was followed by phase 3, which was the development of the coping strategies and validation of the strategies as outlined. Purposive sampling was employed to select two districts and then four circuits. Phase 1a identified factors influencing implementation of existing Life Orientation curriculum. Eight schools were selected using stratified random sampling. Simple random sampling was used to select 521 grade 10, 11 and 12 adolescent girls. Data was collected through a self-designed and self-administered questionnaire. Data was analysed descriptively using statistical software Stata/IC version 15.0. of the computer program. Validity and reliability were ensured. Phase 1b identified the predisposing, enabling, and reinforcing factors that can affect the behaviours, attitudes, and environmental factors contributing to the implementation of Life skills programmes in schools. A qualitative approach, and explorative, descriptive and contextual designs were applied. The population were all guardians and school teachers. Purposive sampling was used to select guardians for the focus groups discussions and teachers for in-depth interviews. Data analysis employed Tesch open coding method. Phase 2 was the development strategies to facilitate the implementation of existing LO programme in Limpopo province. Results from Structured Interviews, Focused group, Questionnaires were fused together with the use of the Precede Proceed Model. Phase 3 was to validate the developed strategies. The aim of validation was to collect and evaluate data, from the process design stage, the consistency and quality of the product or outcome of the strategies. The objectives to validate the strategies were to: determine the credibility of the strategies. The researcher used the non–experimental, intervention validation design to validated the credibility of the developed strategies. The developed strategies were given to the learners, guardians and Life Orientation teachers Vhembe and Mopani district. To collect data, the researcher used a checklist with 6 questions as outlined by Chin and Kramer (refer to table 6.4). Simple descriptive statistics was use where the data was summarized using the frequency distribution. / NRF