Life skills

Adult Learning and Education provides the necessary life skills but also anticipates and shapes future developments. This includes basic, or essential skills such as literacy and numeracy but also digital skills, language skills and a wide range of key competences everyone needs in daily life, such as financial literacy, health literacy and media literacy.

Challenges

A significant proportion of adults in Europe are left behind in basic and essential skills, but also in skills to manage their lives successfully.

What adult learning and education can do for Life skills

Everyone should have the essential skills and capabilities that they need for life and work in the 21st century. ALE provides the necessary life skills but also anticipates and shapes future developments. This includes basic, or essential skills such as literacy and numeracy but also digital skills, language skills and a wide range of key competences everyone needs in daily life, such as financial literacy, health literacy and media literacy. ALE provides skills and learning experiences that have many benefits and purposes and offer many ways that support individuals throughout their careers and lives.

EAEA, together with members and partners, has developed a ‘European framework for life skills’ which emphasises the need for lifelong and life-wide learning for all. In an era characterised by constant economic, technological and social developments, all people in Europe need to continuously develop, enhance and update their life skills. Informal and non-formal ALE can help with this: evidence shows that ALE activities of all kinds, regardless of the specific learning content, promote life skills. ALE providers need to emphasise these transversal educational goals even more in the future to demonstrate the wealth of competences that learners acquire. Research evidence and ALE practice show that basic skills such as numeracy, literacy and digital skills are foundations for lifelong learning and also for the development of capabilities for life and work. Life skills cannot be learned in an abstract and theoretical way – the individual must collect, probe and discuss their experience where it happens in real life. It is important not to forget the contextuality of life skills as this leads to the success of life skills learning: this means that life skills need to be adapted to the specific contexts of each country, group and individual. Life skills are in constant evolution in terms of individual, economic, social and cultural contexts.

Estera Možina, head of the thematic field at the Slovenian Institute for Adult Education has written a blog post on EPALE on life skills.

Research evidence

Arianna Sala, Yves Punie, Vladimir Garkov and Marcelino Cabrera Giraldez (2020) LifeComp: The European Frameowkr for Personal, Social and Learning to Learn Key Competence – read more

“Our societies are undergoing rapid changes, with technological developments largely driving at such a fast pace. Automation is already transforming the labour market, with routine and low-skill tasks increasingly being performed by machines. Technologies are therefore playing an increasingly important role in several areas of life, leading to skills quickly becoming obsolete, producing new work models, and stressing the need for people to update their skills throughout their lives. In the economic sphere, we are seeing swift changes in the forms of employment, whereby temporary positions are more common; not only this, employers are increasingly seeking workers with competences such as flexibility, and a disposition towards continued learning.

Demographic changes – due to the ageing population pyramid in the EU – highlight the need for renewed efforts to nurture personal well-being and ensure longer but also more fulfilling lives. To cope with complex life situations, european citizens need to continuously develop competences which allow them to successfully manage the challenges posed by the many transitions taking place in their work, in their spheres, and society. Individuals need to deal with uncertainty, nurture their resilience, develop on a personal level, build successful interpersonal relations, and learn how to learn. Formal, non-formal, and informal education can contribute to the acquisition of these competences.”

Sala, A., Punie, Y., Garkov, V., & Cabrera Giraldez, M. (2020). LifeComp: The European Framework for Personal, Social and Learning to Learn Key Competence. Publications of the Joint Research Centre.

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Good practice I

Citizen’s Curriculum in Wales – read more

Volunteers and teaching staff have been working with the University of South Wales to design a teacher training course at Oasis that meets the needs of people seeking sanctuary in Wales. The content of the lessons is based on the real-life needs of the learners.

Refugees and asylum seekers face unique challenges and barriers upon arriving in a new country. They may struggle to carry out even basic tasks like seeing a doctor due to language barriers, and some have literacy needs due to disrupted schooling.

Free ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classes take place at Oasis five days a week, where the new teacher training course is being delivered. For many refugees and asylum seekers, these classes are their primary social space, providing a sense of structure to their lives and offering both linguistic and psychological support.

One of the refugees involved in the pilot said: “When I came last year I had depression and anxiety. I didn’t know about the English language. But I feel relaxed when I come to Oasis and I learn a lot of things here. They give me ESOL class but most importantly confidence. I will never forget this.”

The Citizen’s Curriculum: Empowering adult learners in Wales (2024).

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Good practice II

Framework for Life Skills – read more

The “Life Skills for Europe” project (2016-2018) developed a framework for Life Skills that is meant to be practical and to support practitioners in applying and developing their own concrete learning and teaching methods.

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