The problem I investigated in this research is the extent to which participation in a secondary school musical production contributes curricularly and pedagogically towards equipping learners for meaningful and successful living in a rapidly changing and transforming society within a life skills education programme. The importance of creating a dialogic space where secondary school learners may practise life skills within the Life Orientation curriculum has been my main focus. My aim was to investigate and discuss the Life Orientation potential of the secondary school musical production as dialogic educative space for life skills attainment. I specifically employed a hybrid epistemology, namely constructivist hermeneutic phenomenology. In this qualitative study a small number of participants were interviewed individually and in focus groups because of their particular knowledge and lived experience regarding the research topic and the musical The Green Crystal as the chosen case study. This enabled me to construct and interpret their subjective reality and construct meaning within the particular social context of the secondary school musical production. The data I generated, coded and interpreted validate the notion that the secondary school musical production is a hybrid genre which is essentially a practise ground for life skills attainment through the media of music, movement and drama. It also emerged from the data that the secondary school musical production provides a dialogic and educative space to and for all participants to practise life skills within the subject Life Orientation. The participants indicated that their participation in the productions have been life-changing events. A notable contribution from the data was the confirmation that life skills learnt and practised during the musical production are transported into adult life. The life skills learnt through participation in a secondary school musical production are embedded in the memory of the participants and the lessons learnt purify over time. These individual and psychosocial life skills gained, honed and practised by participants assisted them in adapting to a changing and transforming society as functional and contributing adults (self-in-society). / MEd (Learning and Teaching), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

The problem I investigated in this research is the extent to which participation in a secondary school musical production contributes curricularly and pedagogically towards equipping learners for meaningful and successful living in a rapidly changing and transforming society within a life skills education programme. The importance of creating a dialogic space where secondary school learners may practise life skills within the Life Orientation curriculum has been my main focus. My aim was to investigate and discuss the Life Orientation potential of the secondary school musical production as dialogic educative space for life skills attainment. I specifically employed a hybrid epistemology, namely constructivist hermeneutic phenomenology. In this qualitative study a small number of participants were interviewed individually and in focus groups because of their particular knowledge and lived experience regarding the research topic and the musical The Green Crystal as the chosen case study. This enabled me to construct and interpret their subjective reality and construct meaning within the particular social context of the secondary school musical production. The data I generated, coded and interpreted validate the notion that the secondary school musical production is a hybrid genre which is essentially a practise ground for life skills attainment through the media of music, movement and drama. It also emerged from the data that the secondary school musical production provides a dialogic and educative space to and for all participants to practise life skills within the subject Life Orientation. The participants indicated that their participation in the productions have been life-changing events. A notable contribution from the data was the confirmation that life skills learnt and practised during the musical production are transported into adult life. The life skills learnt through participation in a secondary school musical production are embedded in the memory of the participants and the lessons learnt purify over time. These individual and psychosocial life skills gained, honed and practised by participants assisted them in adapting to a changing and transforming society as functional and contributing adults (self-in-society). / MEd (Learning and Teaching), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

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