Interactive Effect of Life Skills Education Program and Socio-Economic Status on Critical Thinking (PDF)

Vol 6 Issue 12 Jan 2017 ISSN No : 2230-7850 ORIGINAL ARTICLE International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Indian Streams Research Journal Executive Editor Editor-in-Chief Ashok Yakkaldevi...

Vol 6 Issue 12 Jan 2017 ISSN No : 2230-7850 ORIGINAL ARTICLE International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Indian Streams Research Journal Executive Editor Editor-in-Chief Ashok Yakkaldevi H.N.Jagtap  Welcome to ISRJ RNI MAHMUL/2011/38595 ISSN No.2230-7850 Indian Streams Research Journal is a multidisciplinary research journal, published monthly in English, Hindi & Marathi Language. All research papers submitted to the journal will be double - blind peer reviewed referred by members of the editorial board.Readers will include investigator in universities, research institutes government and industry with research interest in the general subjects. Regional Editor Dr. T. Manichander Mr. Dikonda Govardhan Krushanahari Professor and Researcher , Rayat shikshan sanstha’s, Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu College, Kolhapur. International Advisory Board Kamani Perera Mohammad Hailat Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Hasan Baktir Regional Center For Strategic Studies, Sri University of South Carolina Aiken English Language and Literature Lanka Department, Kayseri Janaki Sinnasamy Abdullah Sabbagh Engineering Studies, Sydney Ghayoor Abbas Chotana Librarian, University of Malaya Dept of Chemistry, Lahore University of Ecaterina Patrascu Management Sciences[PK] Romona Mihaila Spiru Haret University, Romania Spiru Haret University, Bucharest Anna Maria Constantinovici Loredana Bosca AL. I. Cuza University, Romania Delia Serbescu Spiru Haret University, Bucharest, Spiru Haret University, Romania Ilie Pintea, Romania Fabricio Moraes de Almeida Spiru Haret University, Romania Anurag Misra Federal University of Rondonia, Brazil Xiaohua Yang DBS College, Kanpur George - Calin SERITAN PhD, USA Titus PopPhD, Partium Christian Faculty of Philosophy and Socio-Political Sciences Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi......More University, Oradea,Romania Editorial Board Pratap Vyamktrao Naikwade Iresh Swami Rajendra Shendge ASP College Devrukh,Ratnagiri,MS India Ex - VC. Solapur University, Solapur Director, B.C.U.D. Solapur University, Solapur R. R. Patil N.S. Dhaygude Head Geology Department Solapur Ex. Prin. Dayanand College, Solapur R. R. Yalikar University,Solapur Director Managment Institute, Solapur Narendra Kadu Rama Bhosale Jt. Director Higher Education, Pune Umesh Rajderkar Prin. and Jt. Director Higher Education, Head Humanities & Social Science Panvel K. M. Bhandarkar YCMOU,Nashik Praful Patel College of Education, Gondia Salve R. N. S. R. Pandya Department of Sociology, Shivaji Sonal Singh Head Education Dept. Mumbai University, University,Kolhapur Vikram University, Ujjain Mumbai Govind P. Shinde G. P. Patankar Alka Darshan Shrivastava Bharati Vidyapeeth School of Distance S. D. M. Degree College, Honavar, Karnataka Shaskiya Snatkottar Mahavidyalaya, Dhar Education Center, Navi Mumbai Maj. S. Bakhtiar Choudhary Rahul Shriram Sudke Chakane Sanjay Dnyaneshwar Director,Hyderabad AP India. Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya, Indore Arts, Science & Commerce College, Indapur, Pune S.Parvathi Devi S.KANNAN Ph.D.-University of Allahabad Annamalai University,TN Awadhesh Kumar Shirotriya Secretary,Play India Play,Meerut(U.P.) Sonal Singh, Satish Kumar Kalhotra Vikram University, Ujjain Maulana Azad National Urdu University Address:-Ashok Yakkaldevi 258/34, Raviwar Peth, Solapur - 413 005 Maharashtra, India Cell : 9595 359 435, Ph No: 02172372010 Email: [email protected] Website: www.isrj.org  Indian Streams Research Journal ISSN: 2230-7850 Impact Factor : 4.1625(UIF) Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO- ECONOMIC STATUS OF STUDENTS ON THEIR CRITICAL THINKING Ms. Rabiya Saboowala1 and Dr. Shefali Pandya2 1 Ph.D. student , Department of Education, University of Mumbai. 2 Professor ,Department of Education,University of Mumbai. ABSTRACT W orld Health Organization (1998), describes life skills as psycho-social competencies which encompass a person’s ability to maintain a state of mental wellbeing and to demonstrate this in adaptive and positive behavior as s/he interacts with others, his/her culture and environment.Childhood and adolescence are the developmental periods during which one acquires these skills through various methods and people. Life skills education program are designed in such a way for the youth to understand self and able to assess their skill, abilities and developments, these skills include decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, creative thinking, effective communication skills, crises management, stress management, time management, emotional management etc. In today's fast paced and technologically advanced world, the challenge for teachers is to teach students critical thinking skills and the ability to practice them competently in a variety of situations not only in the schools but also in day to day life. Classrooms can act as simulated environment where critical thinking skills can be though to students which will prepare them to face the world outside in near future. The present study was to ascertain the interactive effect of life skills education program and socio-economic status on critical thinking among standard eighth students. For this purpose, an intervention program based on life skills education of about 29 hours 30 mins was developed for students spreading over eight weeks. The aim of the research was to ascertain whether life skills education facilitates the critical thinking of students, and if so, for which level of socio economic status of students. The participants of the study included 55 and 48 students in the experimental and control groups respectively. Critical thinking was significantly affected by the life skills education program whereas the socio-economic status had no effect on the critical thinking of students. Available online at www.lsrj.in 1 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS... Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 KEYWORDS:Life Skills, Life Skills Education Program, Socio-Economic Status, Critical Thinking. INTRODUCTION : Life skills is a term used to describe a set of basic skills acquired through learning and/or direct life experience that enable individuals and groups to effectively handle issues and problems commonly encountered in daily life.Children’s optimal development as the child’s ability to acquire culturally relevant skills and behaviors which allow the child to function effectively in his/her current context as well as to adapt successfully when the context changes, and/ or to bring about change. In a constantly changing environment, having life skills is an essential part of being able to meet the challenges of everyday life.To cope with the increasing pace and change of modern life, students need life skills such as the ability to critically think, to take correct decisions, to solve their own problems in a sorted manner, to find out creative solutions, to be emotionaly strong , etc. An education system should involve learning of life skills that a person will carry even after school/college in order to navigate relationships and careers and be a well- rounded, successful person.Life skill education refers to an interactive process of learning which helps the learners to acquire knowledge and to develop positive attitudes and skills which support the adoption of healthy behaviors in day to day life.The lifestyle and environment that students are experiencing today is not properly preparing them for socializing in an effective way, hence the importance of life skills education should be understood by the teachers as teachers are moulding the students for tomorrow. The development of thinking is considered one of the main objectives that educators seek to achieve. Once these objectives are achieved, students are able to effectively address issues and crises in everyday life as well as the complications of the present and future.Scenarios are a huge way to foster critical thinking and problem solving. Placing students in a real-life scenario and asking them to make decisions is a great way to sharpen their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This offers students a safe environment to make mistakes that they can learn from. Unfortunately, creating scenarios and projects takes a lot of time and effort from the teacher.Most countries today are interested in increasing educational standards and emphasizing on teaching basic skills. However, basic skills are not sufficient to meet market needs, leading to the urgent need to focus on higher-order thinking skills because individuals are unable to retain the tremendous amounts of information in their memory for use and retrieval in the future.Critical thinking is essential for effective functioning in the modern world.Higher- order critical thinking skills are necessary for students preparing for and/or enrolled in professional programs, especially the ability to evaluate and synthesize information, which are vital for problem- solving.Critical thinking is the mental process of analyzing or evaluating information. ‘To reason’ is the capacity for rational thought or to think logically.Once a solid foundation or a healthy self-concepthas been established, it is important to be able to think critically, or to reason.In order to assess roles in and the consequences of any actions that are taken , it is important to evaluate and determine what is taking place in a given situation.This requires the organization of thinking, integrate the information at hand, distinguish between what is fact and what is opinion, and then weigh potential outcomes. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Yadavand Iqbal (2009) in their atudy aimed to see the imp act of life skill training on selfesteem, adjustment and empathy among adolescents. Total sample comprised of 60 students (30 males and 30 females) from the Hans Raj Model School, Punjabi Bagh who has received life skill training from the team of Expressions India. Self esteem inventory (school form), Adjustment inventory for school students (AISS) and the Empathy quotient (EQ) were administered in a group session one by one in two or three days both before training was given and after training. In the post condition, test scores were obtained after 5 months of training. The result showed that subjects improved significantly in post condition on self-esteem, emotional adjustment, educational adjustment, total adjustment and empathy. However, no significant Available online at www.lsrj.in 2 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS... Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 difference was found on social adjustment in pre and post condition. Overall training was very effective as subjects improved in the post condition on all measures except one, thus showing that Life skill training do show positive resuslt in bringing change in adolescent’ s attitude, thought and behavior by providing supportive environment to them. Obiozor (2010) in his article discusses the teaching of life skills to urban American youths who are highly fascinated with the hip-hop culture—songs, raps, miming, lyrics, dressing and musical rhythms, especially individuals with emotional disabilities in the public schools. This is an instructional curriculum strategy to encourage positive and active participation of these students, promote perfect school attendance, encourage good behaviors, deal with anger management and motivate committed learning in the classroom. The instructors’ understanding of students’ culture, learning needs and styles, and using such background knowledge to educate them become imperative in this setting. These urge for innovative and leadership projects in the author’s special education classroom necessitated the application of hip-hop music to teach life skills, reading and other functional skills in the classroom. The outcome was positive and rewarding to both the teachers and students. There are recommendations for interested teachers to devise creative teaching methods, differentiated instruction and appropriate classroom management practices to attain student achievement. Nirmala and Shakuntala (2011) conducted the following research with the objectives to evaluate the effectiveness of concept mapping as a teaching strategy to develop critical thinking skills. Pretest, post test control group design was used. The IV year B.Sc. nursing students were included as experimental group (n=40) and control group (n=44). The experimental group was given a training to prepare nursing care plans using concept mapping. The training program was for 12 weeks where the participants were given case study scenarios every week to prepare nursing care plans using concept map. The experimental group and control group were again assessed for the critical thinking skills. The concept maps were evaluated using scoring criteria. In the post test, there was a significant difference in the critical thinking scores of both the groups at 0.05 level. (t= 2.16). A significant improvement was identified between the pretest and post test critical thinking scores of experiment group at 0.05 level (t=2.0). Comparison of concept mapping scores of the experimental group in the pretest and post test showed a highly significant difference at 0.041 level. The study was able to show a significant improvement in the critical thinking skills of nursing students. However, the critical thinking scores were poor due to the high standard of the assessment tool. It is needed to develop critical thinking skill assessment tool which will suit the nursing community and further research is required to promote concept mapping as a teaching and learning strategy. Fallahchai (2012) aimed to examine the effectiveness of instruction of academic and life skills on the freshmen academic achievement. The research procedure was semiexperimental with pre-test and post- test design with a control group. The statistical sample included 170 freshmen were randomly selected and assigned in experimental and control groups. The instruments were Life skills inventory, average grade first term, and demographic questions. The experimental group attended in 10 weekly sessions (35 hours) of academic and life skills training. The results showed that the students who had received academic and life skills training gained significantly higher scores in life skills and academic achievement than those with no training. Also, not significant different between male and female students in the score of life skills and academic achievement observed. It seems that assessing and meeting student's life skills and academic achievement needs, especially in the first year of their study is very essential. Zakariya (2013) in his study aims to investigate and measure the students' critical thinking skills and achievements in the Arabic language at Primary and secondary stages, also measuring the development of the cognitive Dimensions of critical thinking asserted by the researcher. The researcher has identified five elements which comprise of the varying levels of critical thinking abilities in the Arabic Language. These are as follows; analyses, inference, Induction, deduction and evaluation. The Arabic grammar and literature exam has been formulated for both primary and secondary Pupils, in order to answer the questions posed Available online at www.lsrj.in 3 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS... Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 by the study. The researcher found out that the levels achievement of critical thinking of students in both stages, are average and satisfactory, there is no significant statistical difference in the achievement of critical thinking skills between primary and secondary students, there is also no significant statistical differences in the achievement of critical thinking skills attributed to gender, However there are significant statistical differences in the achievement of critical thinking skills between Government schools & public schools. Records show that critical thinking thrives mostly in public schools. According to the category of critical thinking skills, students can deal with analysis best, this dimension ranked top of the list of answers Evaluation, inference, deduction and induction came last respectively. Subasree and Nair (2014) conducted a study with the purpose to develop a valid, reliable scale to measure life skills. The first phase involved the conceptualization and operationalization of life skills based on the review and identifies the research gaps. Similar questionnaires, scales were reviewed, based on that the items were framed for the tool. In the second phase, Face and content validity were assessed by a panel of experts, data collection (N= 890) was carried out extensively to establish reliability and validity for the Life Skills Assessment Scale. Using Cronbach's coefficient alpha, test retest, split half reliability methods the internal consistency was assessed for the tool. After item analysis and construct validity assessment, the test items showing weak indicators were eliminated in a stepwise fashion until the reliability coefficient peaked. However, highest reliability was already obtained without eliminating items. The final summated scale of 100 indicators had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of.84. The psychometric properties were established adopting standard procedure OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS OF THE TERMS Socio-Economic Status: Socio-Economic Status refers to the amount of wealth, power and prestige enjoyed by a student’s family. Life Skills EducationProgram: Life skills education program is a structured program developed by the researcher designed to bring about a change in behavior in relation to knowledge and skills which includes the preaching of life skills required in day to day life to face the challenges of the growing world. Life skills may include communication skills, stress and conflict management, decision making, problem solving, creative and critical thinking. Critical Thinking : Critical thinking is that mode of thinking about any subject, content, or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it. Statement of the Problem Interactive Effect of Life Skills Education Program and Socio-Economic Status of Students on their Critical Thinking. Scope and Delimitations of the Study In the present study, English medium schools from South Mumbai affiliated to the SSC board have been included. It excludes schools with other medium of instruction such as Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati etc. Students from standard eighth were included for the study, other primary and secondary classes have been excluded. It also excludes schools affiliated to ICSE or CBSE boards. The present research studied the interactive effect of life skills education program and socio-economic status on decision making of students. It has excluded other student-background variables such as religion, mother tongue, etc. from its purview. The study has adopted the quantitative approach to the study rather than the qualitative approach. Aim of the Study To ascertain the interactive effect of the intervention program and socio-economic status of students on their critical thinking Available online at www.lsrj.in 4 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS... Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY Following are the objectives of the study: 1. To ascertain the interactive effect of the intervention program and socio-economic status on critical thinking of students. 2. To compute the effect size of the intervention program and socio-economic status on critical thinking of students. Null Hypothesis of the Study Following is the null hypothesis of the study: 1. There is no significant the interactive effect of the intervention program and socio-economic status on critical thinking of students. Methodology of the Present Study The study adopted the quasi- experimental method. In the present research, quasi -experimental design of the pre- test post-test, non-equivalent group’s type was used. It can be described as follows: The pre-test-post-test non-equivalent groups design. O1 X O2 O3 C O4 Where, O1 and O3= Pre-test Scores O2 and O4= Post- test Scores X : Experimental Group C : Control Group The duration of the treatment was for 29 hours 30 mins in the experimental group. There was no treatment given in the control group. SAMPLE OF THE STUDY: In the present study, the sample has been selected consisting of one intact class each of standard eighth from two different schools situated in the South Mumbai. The experimental and the control groups included 55 and 48 students respectively. TOOLS OF THE STUDY In the present study the following tools were used by the researcher to collect data: 1.Critical thinkingrating scaleprepared by Mincemoyer, Perkins and Munyua (2001) 2. Socio-Economic Status inventory prepared by Patel (1997) INTERVENTION PROGRAM The duration of the intervention program was 29 hours 30 mins. The experimental group was taught about life skills education through the intervention program where as no treatment was given to the control group. The life skills education program mainly highlighted the cognitive skill of critical thinking. Various activities were designed to develop critical thinking among the students which included case studies, role play, stories, moral dilemma, situations and scenarios, etc. DATA ANALYSIS Null hypothesis 1 There is no significant difference in the interactive effect of the intervention program (IP) and socio- Available online at www.lsrj.in 5 INTERACTIVE EFFECT OF LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION PROGRAM AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS... Volume - 6 | Issue - 12 | January - 2017 economic status (SES) on critical thinking (CT) of students. This hypothesis was tested using two-way ANCOVA in which the pre-test scores of students is controlled. The following table shows the relevant statistics of critical thinking of students by treatment and socio-economic status Table 1: Relevant statistics for ANCOVA Socio-economic status Low SES Average SES High SES Total CG 12 24 12 48 EG 15 26 14 55 Total 27 50 26 103 Mean scores CG 66.1397 67.8791 66.3279 67.0565 EG 79.5985 81.908 81.4788 81.1689 Total 73.6168 75.1742 74.4861 74.5922 The following table shows the ANCOVA for critical thinking of students by intervention program and SES after partial ling out the effect of the pre-test critical thinking of students. Table 2: ANCOVA for critical thinking of students by treatment (T) and Socio-Economic Status (SES) Source SS df MS F P Rows 5104.66 1 5104.66 72.12