ED208
Dr. Denise Pope
Masataka Nakaue
Curriculum Critique on “Life Skills Manual” of Peace Corps
Overview of the curriculum
The curriculum that I chose is “Life Skill Manual” created by Peace Corp in 2001. This
curriculum is to educate 9 – 12 years old teenagers for better and healthier lives by fostering
their skills to “critically think and modify their behaviors” (p. 14).
Students learn the life skills
such as communication, decision-making, thinking, managing emotions, assertiveness,
self-esteem building, relationship skills through group discussions, role-plays, games, puzzles,
and other interactive activities.
It was originally written for African teenagers to change their
behaviors and attitudes to prevent them from being infected by HIV/AIDS, and the curriculum
was re-edited for global distribution and most of the curriculum contents are applicable to
many different at-risk teenager issues such as drug, alcohol, and juvenile delinquency.
The
manual recommends users to “be sure to adapt each and every session to make it more
appropriate to your local culture.” The curriculum can be situated in different settings such
as schools, health care centers and youth clubs. I specifically chose “Decision-Making Skills”
section for this critique that consists of nine lessons.
Detailed view of the Decision-Making Skills curriculum
In the Decision-Making Skills section of Life Skills Manual, students learn decision-making
strategies, deal with moral conflict, enhance their self-awareness, deepen their knowledge
about risk behaviors, and learn about specific topics such drug, alcohol, delaying sex, and
early pregnancy.
In the curriculum, students actively participate in activities and discussions.
For example, in the lesson about moral conflict, small groups of students create role-plays
based on the role-play cards and perform their role-plays.
The role-play cards suggest very
difficult situations such that a student should decide whether s/he should make an unmoral
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behavior public by breaking his/her preceding promise to keep it secret. After each roll play,
the entire class will discuss on the following questions: “Do we all agree with the decision that
was made?” “Does anyone think the situation should have ended differently?” “What values
were at work in arriving at these decisions?” The lesson about “Alcohol and Drug Use”
employs role-play, too. “Life Skill Manual” provides some facts about Alcohol and Drug for
the instructor, and the instructor leads the introductory discussion about the topic before the
role-play to familiarize students with the topic. After the role-play, students think and talk
about reasons and consequences of risk behaviors. As in these examples, generally, a lesson
starts with an introductory explanation about the topic, and then students do group activities
and discussions.
Finally, the instructor evaluates the discussions and reinforces positive
attitudes and behaviors.
Rationales and principles behind the plan
“Life Skills Manual” uses a theoretical model named Bridge Model throughout the curriculum
for behavioral changes. This model suggests a way to scaffold students to the curriculum’s
goal that they feel capable of performing healthier behaviors.
In this model, students should
cross over the sea of negative consequences from their current troublesome standing points
to the land of happier and healthier lives.
A bridge is a metaphor of scaffolding.
At first,
accurate information is provided as a solid foundation. Then, in order to cross the sea of the
negative consequences to reach the positive, healthy and fulfilling life, the Life Skills Program
provides lessons about individual skills as the planks in the bridge. As “relapse is expected
in any behavior change,” the curriculum provides the ways to bring people back onto the
bridge. This idea of scaffolding derives from constructivism view of learners that they are
active subjects who construct knowledge based on their prior experiences.
This view
corresponds to the concept of cognitive development that Dewey, Vygotsky and Piaget
advocated (Eisner, 1994). Students spontaneously cross the bridge with the support from
their peers and instructors. This is a different education model from the Banking education
that Freire criticized, in which students are mere information consumers. Life Skills Manual
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recommends; “keep your participants involved by eliciting answers from them rather than
lecturing to the group” (p. 19). It also says that “information is, although necessary, is rarely
enough by itself to behavior change in most people” (p. 10). The influence of progressivism
in Life Skills Manual can also be identified by the method that students learn by solving
difficult problems through role-plays, games, and discussions.
As to progressivism, Eisner
describes it; “First and foremost, it was to be problem-centered.” Students think of the given
problematic scenarios and discuss the solutions together.
Also, as in Dewey’s progressivism,
the processes of Life Skills Manual’s activities are democratic that agreement and critical
thinking based on reasoning is emphasized in discussions.
For example, in the risk behavior
lesson, students are encouraged to “reach an agreement on the levels of risk” when they
categorize various risk behaviors to different level of risk (p. 172).
Settings and context
As described earlier, the curriculum can be localized in many different settings. In any case,
it strongly encourages the implementer to work closely with community leaders and peer
educators.
Community leaders are those who support the program. If the curriculum were
implemented in a school, then they would be teachers and headmasters.
Peer educators
should be carefully considered before the implementation because they can be inappropriate
for some students. The educator who uses this curriculum is expected to have excellent
communication skills with those who are related to the program. In addition, the educators
should understand democratic procedures to create the framework for the students to learn
from each other.
The teachers are required to have the skills to coordinate of the
discussions and activities as well as to bring necessary information to the classes.
Analysis of the intended goals and learning activities
Decision-making skills are acquired throughout the nine lessons.
The sequence of the
lessons are organized such that students learn from general topics to more specific topics so
that specific topics such as early pregnancy and delaying sex do not overwhelm the students
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before they have general decision-making skills. This is based on one of the curriculum’s
principles: “If fear is overwhelming it can hinder, rather than help efforts to change. Too
much fear may cause people to deny they are at risk … and to avoid seeking medical care
altogether” (p.10). The flow of each lesson is; 1) students briefly learn basic information
about the topic. 2) Students construct knowledge in small groups by activities such as making
scenarios, sorting out different values, and thinking about their own opinions. 3) Finally, the
groups share their thoughts with the entire class and evaluate each other’s activities.
The
activities of Decision-Making Skills manual are designed carefully with the sensitivity to the
students’ mental load and that is required for a curriculum that deals with human skills. As to
relatively positive and neutral themes such as “The Person I Admire” and “Your Goals,”
students will think about the topics on their own experiences, their own thoughts and their own
characters.
However, when it comes to relatively negative and difficult topics, students
perform role-plays, games, and puzzles.
In this way, they do not have to directly face their
own difficult problems, which they often do not want to, but they can still learn the essential
ideas which will eventually help them when they are forced to face their own issues.
Assessment
Assessment in this curriculum is mainly for the educators, community leaders, and community
members.
It uses both formative and summative assessments.
The assessments are
conducted to “raise awareness of key issues” in the community and “pint to any changes that
could be implemented to improve the program”(p.17). We can analyze this curriculum’s
assessment as its purpose is for accountability to the community and for the educators’
understanding about their students. The curriculum is missing the assessment for students
to know how well they understand the topic issues.
Thinking of the open-ended
characteristics of the curriculum, I suggest that the assessment on students’ performance
should be formative, constructed response format such that students keep their portfolios and
reflective logs. This will help students be more aware of the emerging learning about their
life skills.
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