Dilek ERDURAN AVCI1, Damla KAMER2
1Mehmet Akif Ersoy University, TURKEY.
2Private Palmiye Middle School, TURKEY.
DOI: 10.14689/ejer.2018.77.1
ABSTRACT
Purpose: Teachers have an important role to help their students acquire and improve their life skills. Therefore, it is essential to ask what science teachers think about the concept of life skills and how they perceive this concept. The aim of this study was to examine how science teachers perceive life skills and what they think about life skills as part of the learning process in Turkish Science Course Curriculum.
Research Methods: This research was conducted as a case-study. 26 science teachers, who worked in the centre of Burdur province, participated in the study. Data were collected with semi-structured interviews.
Findings: This study revealed that science teachers believed that life skills are necessary for every individual but when it was assessed according to Turkish Science Course Curriculum, awareness of relating life skills to daily life was significantly low. Most teachers perceived life skills limited only to their own branch of education (e.g., science).
Implications for Research and Practice: It was essential for us to increase the level of teacher awareness about life skills, which are integrated to the curriculum, in order to make the students gain and/or improve the life skills required in the 21st century. We propose that new policies, which focus on pre-service and in-service educational activities that help teachers to improve their vocational qualifications to integrate their own life skills with the courses, should be developed.
Keywords: 4-H life skills, science literacy, teachers’ perceptions, science course.