Unit 3

Developing Strategies
for Enhancing Life

Skills
Unit 3
• Life Skills are the skills which are required by one to adapt to rapidly
changing environment, both social and physical.
• lead them to success and accomplishment.
• Life skills Education is an effective tool for empowering the youth to act
responsibly, take initiative and control over stress and emotions.
• World Health Organisation (WHO, 1997) defines life skills as “the ability
for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal
effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.”
Education system
• need to change in terms of the philosophy of education in our system

of education.
• It needs to be more humanistic.
• The all-around development of the child is unobserved.
• Faith in a human capacity defined in terms of the ability to assess a
problem situation and find solutions, capacity for convergent and
divergent thinking, effective interpersonal skills, and ability to
communicate effectively, has been undervalued.
Continued
• Education, today, needs to enable a child to deal effectively with the

environment, make maximum use of resources, discern available
opportunities and face the challenges of society
• The life skills are the combination of variety of psychological and
interpersonal skills which help one to live a happy, healthy and
prosperous life.
• With the help of a set of these skills, the individual is able to adjust
effectively with the needs and challenges of everyday life.
Critical Thinking
• the art of critical thinking involves an approach to thinking--more importantly to

learning--that embraces changing how one thinks about thinking
• Critical thinking incorporates how learners develop and apply thought to understand
how thinking can be improved
• To determine strengths and weaknesses in one’s thinking in order to maintain the
strengths and make improvements by targeting the weaknesses.
• Critical implies evaluation of thoughts, ideas or judgments with awareness, creativity
and refinement of these processes as needed
• “any mental activity that helps formulate or solve a problem, make a decision, or fulfill a
desire to understand. It is searching for answers while reaching for meaning”
• Problem solving is the ultimate intent of critical thinking for many scholars who study
the phenomenon.
Characteristics of a critical thinker
• Critical thinkers are those persons who can move beyond “typical”
thinking models to an advanced way of thinking
• They become more adept in their thinking by using a variety of probing
techniques
• critical thinkers tend to see the problem from many perspectives, to
consider many different investigative approaches
• they are more willing to take intellectual risks, to be adventurous, to
consider unusual ideas, and to use their imaginations while analyzing
problems and issues.
Continued:
• Acknowledge personal limitations.

• See problems as exciting challenges.
• Have understanding as a goal.
• Use evidence to make judgments.
• Are interested in others’ ideas.
• Are skeptical of extreme views.
• Think before acting.
• Avoid emotionalism
• Keep an open mind
• Engage in active listening
Knowledge Construction
• Knowledge construction relates to the kind of reflective and

evaluative engagement with information that is required to make
accurate sense of it.
• It involves establishing what we know and what we need to know,
what information seems plausible, useful and reliable, and how it
can best be organised to derive explanatory sense and meaning
from it.
• Identifies gaps in knowledge
• Discriminates amongst information
• Identifies patterns and makes connections
Solution focused thinking
• When you focus on the problem instead of the desired outcome, you get stuck
in the depths of the problem
• Only when your frame of mind is changed to focusing on the desired result can
you begin to move forward toward the desired outcome
• Rather than dwelling on the difficulties or the setbacks, the idea of the solution
becomes the road to results
• One of the main ways of producing Solution-Focused results that serve the
world is to focus the mind and heart on who you are becoming— and not what
you are overcoming.
• visualizing outcomes
• Future focused
Evaluating Reasoning
• Evaluating reasoning refers to the thinking required to discern the validity of
arguments, scientific theories, statements, proofs and other formulations of ideas.
• It involves analysing and evaluating verbally-constructed arguments and other non-
verbal representations of information.
• Reasoning itself can be represented in a variety of forms such as verbal, spatial,
abstract, numerical, mechanical, algorithmic and graphical
• It requires the ability to apply concepts of propositional logic such as inference,
causality, contradiction, and consistency.
• It involves identifying where certain conclusions are predicated on assumptions,
what assumptions these are, and whether they are reasonable
• Justifying arguments involves the ability to formulate one’s ideas, and hold one’s
own claims and opinions to account by supporting them with evidence and sound
reasoning, and avoid biases in one’s own reasoning
Activities for critical thinking
• You spot a mistake in a high-profile report made by your manager but it

has already been sent out to stakeholders. How do you handle the
situation?
• What are the challenges that a person with disability may face at
workplace in India? How to resolve them?
• How does communalism affect India’s growth?
• Transparency and accountability are the important components of
good governance. Discuss.
Ethics
• Ethics refers to standards and practices that tell us how human

beings ought to act in the many situations in which they find
themselves—as friends, parents, children, citizens,
businesspeople, professionals, and so on.
• Ethics is also concerned with our character.
• It requires knowledge, skills, and habits.
What ethics is NOT
• Ethics is not the same as feelings

• Ethics is not the same as religion
• Ethics is not the same thing as following the law
• Ethics is not the same as following culturally
accepted norms
• Ethics is not science
Ethical Framework
• The Rights Lens

• The Justice Lens
• The Utilitarian Lens: How will this action impact everyone affected?
• The Common Good Lens
• The Virtue Lens: Honesty, courage, compassion, generosity, tolerance,
love, fidelity, integrity, fairness, self-control, and prudence
• The Care Ethics Lens: privileges the flourishing of embodied individuals
Integrity and
Character traits
• Thankful
• Respectful
• Honest
• Trustworthy
• Hardworking
• Responsible
• Helpful
• Patient
Integrity at Workplace
Being dependable and Being open and honest when Holding yourself accountable
following through on communicating with others and owning up to your
commitments shortcomings
Exercise open Be accountable
Lead by example.
communication. for your actions.
Report
Learn to take inappropriate, Be civil and
responsibilities unethical respectful.
How to
behavior.
uphold Exercise patience
integrity at
and emotional Respect property
control.
workplace
Problem-solving
• Task difficulty
• Number of possible solutions
• Group member interest in problem
• Group familiarity with problem
• Need for solution acceptance
Group Problem-Solving Process
• Define the Problem

• Analyze the Problem
• Generate Possible Solutions
• Evaluate Solutions
• Implement and Assess the Solution
Decision-making
• Different from personal decision making

• Brainstorming before Decision Making
• Discussion before Decision Making
Specific Decision-Making
Techniques
• Majority rule
• Minority rule
• Consensus rule
Six hats model of Decision
making
• White hat. Objective—focuses on seeking information such as data and facts
and then processes that information in a neutral way.
• Red hat. Emotional—uses intuition, gut reactions, and feelings to judge
information and suggestions.
• Black hat. Negative—focuses on potential risks, points out possibilities for
failure, and evaluates information cautiously and defensively.
• Yellow hat. Positive—is optimistic about suggestions and future outcomes,
gives constructive and positive feedback, points out benefits and advantages.
• Green hat. Creative—tries to generate new ideas and solutions, thinks
“outside the box.”
• Blue hat. Philosophical—uses metacommunication to organize and reflect on
the thinking and communication taking place in the group, facilitates who
wears what hat and when group members change hats.
Influences on Decision Making
• Situational Influences on Decision Making

• Personality Influences on Decision Making: value oriented: the
economic, the aesthetic, the theoretical, the social, the political,
and the religious
• Cultural Context and Decision Making: individualism/collectivism,
power distance, and high-/low-context communication styles
• International Diversity in Group Interactions
• Domestic Diversity and Group Communication
Activity for Ethical decision-making
Rampura, a remote district inhabited by a tribal population, is marked by extreme

backwardness and abject poverty. Agriculture is the mainstay of the local population,
though it is primarily subsistence due to the very small land holdings. There is
insignificant industrial or mining activity. Even the targeted welfare programs have
inadequately benefited the tribal population. In this restrictive scenario, the youth has
begun to migrate to other states to supplement the family income. Plight of minor girls
is that their parents are persuaded by labour contractors to send them to work in the
Bt Cotton farms of a nearby state. The soft fingers of the minor girls are well suited for
plucking the cotton. The inadequate living and working conditions in these farms have
caused serious health issues for the minor girls. NGOs in the districts of domicile and
the cotton farms appear to be compromised and have not effectively espoused the
twin issues of child labour and development of the area. You are appointed as the
District Collector of Rampura. Identify the ethical issues involved. Which specific steps
will you initiate to ameliorate the conditions of minor girls of your district and to
improve the over-all economic scenario in the district?

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Unit 3

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Developing Strategies

for Enhancing Life

• need to change in terms of the philosophy of education in our system

• Education, today, needs to enable a child to deal effectively with the

• the art of critical thinking involves an approach to thinking--more importantly to

• Acknowledge personal limitations.

• Knowledge construction relates to the kind of reflective and

• You spot a mistake in a high-profile report made by your manager but it

• Ethics refers to standards and practices that tell us how human

• Ethics is not the same as feelings

• The Rights Lens

uphold Exercise patience

• Define the Problem

• Different from personal decision making

• Situational Influences on Decision Making

Rampura, a remote district inhabited by a tribal population, is marked by extreme

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