Life Skills Collaborative (LSC) is a collaborative of 18 organisations with multi-sectoral expertise. LSC aims to build a life skills-focused learning ecosystem for young people through an on-ground outreach program. It is building a life skills platform to support government agencies and educational institutions in the transformation of India’s learning ecosystem. The Collaborative, through various on-ground initiatives, is working to deepen the understanding of life skills, design learning tools that nurture life skills, and develop context-relevant assessments to measure progress, share learnings, and inform system change in India.
The Collaborative is a group of 18 organizations with multi-sectoral expertise across education, skill development, and gender.
So far in Phase 1, LSC is working in tandem with state governments of Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, and Mizoram towards data collection, translation, and validation of the assessment tools. The validation inputs from the government experts will further help to improve and contextualize the tools for these states. Gradual work is done towards contextual, social, and cultural inputs for life skills development among the young people in India.
Voices is LSC’s nationwide engagement initiative to gather insights on the understanding of life skills and its need is from young people, parents, and teachers. These valuable voices are being captured to provide contextual definitions of life skills, while simultaneously building a strong public voice for the need of life skills among the governments, donors, and other stakeholders.
Voices track completed the Pilot 03 exercise that involved the collection of inputs from 130 stakeholders across five states of India. Based on the inputs, in certain regional languages, the Adolescent Assessment tools will be re-framed. The Pilot 04 exercise is slated to happen, post the input incorporation.
On the Glossary front, LSC’s Glossary, India’s first Life Skills Glossary, is now live. The Glossary is a detailed list of 51 life skills, offering contextual definitions of life skills, to enable young people to navigate through the challenges of day-to-day life. We are inviting feedback and suggestions from the general public till February 28, 2022, to strengthen the India Glossary – contextually and structurally.
LSC is currently conducting workshops with State Governments across Maharashtra, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand to validate and contextualise the adolescent and teacher Assessment tools in Hindi, Marathi and Mizo. These tools are also being piloted with students in these states. In the coming months, all Assessment tools will be implemented in five to six districts in all the four states to refine them further and make them contextually relevant to the states.
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We are currently finalizing the tools and platform for organizations to participate in the Voices exercise.
Please drop us an email at voices@lifeskillscollaborative.in with your name and organization. One of our team members will connect with you to discuss how we can work together in the coming months.
The Indian education system is undergoing a major revamp. Learning has gone out of textbooks, and now life skills are getting equal weightage in the educational curriculum. With National Education Policy 2020 in place, the Indian learning system understands the need to have a framework that equips young people with life skills as much as literacy or numeracy skills. In an attempt to facilitate the various players of the learning ecosystem, LSC has decided to scale up the action in the life skills development space and assist the government towards appropriate policymaking. The ‘Voices’ track of LSC gathers data from stakeholders like parents, teachers, students, government officials, etc., to gain a perspective about the stakeholders’ understanding of life skills and the need for the same. The definitions derived from the inputs of stakeholders help the State to define its focus, assessments, and programs. ‘Voices’ through its inputs, assists organizations working in the social development sector in their ongoing/upcoming interventions with various NGOs as well. The data further helps to define life skills contextually, serving as the basis to create a “Glossary” or vocabulary around life skills. Glossary further creates an appropriate foundation for aligning with the outcomes and designing assessments for monitoring progress. LSC’s work on designing assessments is another effort towards life skill development. The assessment tools gauge student and teacher readiness to learn and impart life skills. The track has two Adolescent Assessment Tools, one that focuses on Future Readiness and the other that focuses on Emotional and Mental Wellbeing. The target age groups for the Adolescent Assessment Tools are 11-14 years and 15-18 years.
LSC’s India Glossary will be India’s first comprehensive vocabulary chalking out 51 life skills in detail. Glossary will be an important reference point to start talking about or imparting Life Skill related education to young people. It will help provide information about vital skills that the students need to navigate through life’s challenges. The Glossary will have a proper explanation about each Life Skill, how it can be manifested (life skills in action), related life skills, and specific terms for the skill in other regional languages.
LSC’s India Glossary of life skills is a list of life skills that emerged from an extensive review of 63 SEL, life skills, and 21st-century skills frameworks, globally covering 7 regions with a special focus on work done in and on India. Out of the 63 frameworks, 26 were chosen considering their focus on the Indian landscape and shared with the EASEL Labs of Harvard School of Education for mapping. The definitions for each of these skills have been developed based on literature reviews of relevant research papers. Know more about Glossary genesis here.
The LSC team is inviting feedback from the general public on the overall glossary and individual life skills. The LSC team hopes to strengthen the Glossary through valuable suggestions and feedback, both contextually and structurally. You can share your suggestions in two ways: Writing to us at glossary@lifeskillscollaborative.in, or visiting the glossary webpage and filling the form at the end of the page
Two Adolescent Assessment Tools to focus on life skills in Adolescents, and Teacher Tool are developed by LSC collaborators. The tools are contextualized, translated, and validated across the partner states. The anchor collaborator for the Assessments Repository on Adolescents is being led by Dream-A-Dream and the Centre for Science of Student Learning (CSSL). While the chief anchor for the Assessments Repository on System and Teachers is being anchored by International Center for Research on Women (ICRW)
The intent of the Assessment tools is to gauge the system readiness for fostering life skills. The purpose of the tools is to support and enable the various practitioners of the education system, working in the life skill development space.
The track also assists in developing Assessment Tools for students and teachers that focus on life skills. The track has 2 Adolescent Assessment Tools, for the age group 11-14 and 15-18, and a Teacher Tool for the teachers.
Once the assessment tools are contextualized and validated across the four states of India, namely Maharashtra, Mizoram, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand, the tools will be made available to the public. Practitioners, teachers, government stakeholders, etc. working in the life skills and education space can use these tools to assess young people in the areas of future readiness and emotional and mental wellbeing. A training manual/guide will be provided along with the tool to understand how to use the tool better.
To know more about the Assessment Tools, please write to us at assessments@lifeskillscollaborative.in.
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