Interactive effect of life skills education program and hemisphericity of students on their decision-making

Human is not just a biological animal but also a social one. Living in a society as a social individual is not only the responsibility but also the ultimate goal of human, thus education shapes, molds the overall behavior of human being and nurtures the potentialities. Life skills are those abilities that enable a person to face and manage the challenges with courage leading to improved quality of life. According to World Health Organization (1998) life skills education is designed to facilitate the practice and reinforcement of psycho-social skills in a culturally and developmentally appropriate way; it contributes to the promotion of personal and social development, the prevention of health and social problems and the protection of human rights. Life skills education is an umbrella term which includes all the dimensions of human life including economic, social, and psychological areas. The concept of life skills education has been incorporated to the curriculum of many countries at different levels of their educational systems in large scale depending on the need of that nation. The human brain consists of hemispheres namely the right and left hemispheres. Each hemisphere possesses information processing capability. The idea that the left and right hemispheres exhibit different patterns of thought has caught the public attention and has inspired several educational theories. Hemisphericity is the term used in functional neurology to describe differences in firing rates between the left and right sides of the brain. The present study was to ascertain the interactive effect of life skills education program and hemisphericity on decision-making among standard eighth students. For this purpose, an intervention program based on life skills education of about 29 hours was developed for students spreading over eight weeks. The aim of the research was to ascertain whether life skills education facilitates the decision-making of students, and if so, for which hemisphericity of students. The participants of the study included 55 and 48 students in the experimental and control groups, respectively. The decision-making was significantly affected by the life skills education program and hemisphericity also had an effect on the decision-making of students.