“SOFT SKILLS AND LIFE SKILLS EDUCATION ON THE BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION OF ADOLESCENT SCHEDULED TRIBES IN ANDHRA PRADESH”

Submitted By RSN MURTHY,Research Scholar, Andhra University, 9347204248

Introduction: Present days our education system, as is prevalent today, is rather lopsided. It lays optimum focus on the acquisition of knowledge even at the expense of soft skills, life skills, attitudes and values. Living as we do a sophisticated life style in a sophisticated society, what we require is nothing short of a sophisticated mode of education. Knowledge in itself has little value unless it is put to use. We need today, among other things, soft skills and life skills in a big way rather than were memorization of information. Soft skills are skills, strengths and capabilities that help individuals face problems of their everyday life with a positive attitude and go about with their everyday tasks effectively. Any skill that is useful in our life can be considered a soft skill. Soft skills  based education is a basic learning need for all young people or students because school syllabus teach all the school subjects and most of the students lack soft skills in their personality development. Soft skills educations help the secondary school students to empower in challenging situations. Various skills like leadership, responsibility, communication, intellectual capacity, teamwork, self-esteem, interpersonal skills etc., extend its maximum. Developing soft skills and life skills helps the secondary school students to translate knowledge, attitude and their health behaviour such as acquiring the ability to reduce specific risk behaviour and adopt healthy behaviour that improves their lives in general.

Soft Skills and Life Skills:Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Described in this way, skills that can be said to be life skills are innumerable, and the nature and definition of life skills are likely to differ across cultures and settings. However, analysis of the life skills field suggests that there is a core set of skills that are at the heart of skills-based initiatives for the promotion of the health and well-being of children and adolescents.

Life Skills: There are Ten Life Skills as laid down by WHO are:

1. Self-awareness
2. Empathy
3. Critical thinking
4. Creative thinking
5. Decision making
6. Problem Solving
7. Effective communication
8. Interpersonal relationship
9. Coping with stress
10. Coping with emotion

Soft skills: Soft Skills need to develop soft skills for enhancing the life.

1. Personality & attitude Development,
2. Failure Management
3. Improving success ratio & Performance
4. Team building
5. Leadership basics
6. Analytical and logical thinking
7. SWOT Analysis (based on psychology test)
8. Management a different perspective
9. Communication Concept
10. Communication Skills
11. Presentation skills
12. Public speaking
13. Workplace skills
14. Team Building
15. Time & Time Management
16. Stress & strain Management
17. Personal Effectiveness

Benefits of Soft Skills training:-

• Enhance and improve employable skills
• The ability to communicate effectively with coworkers, employers, clients and customers, friends and family members
• The opportunity to enhance organizational skills
• Improve Personal and professional effectiveness
• Helps in promotions and upgrading Skills
• Increased efficiency and leadership skills to improve team results
• Development of presentation skills to promote more successful projects
• Gaining the ability to recognize symptoms of stress and learning management strategies
• Soft skills represent a fundamental at tribute to today’s knowledge based economy.

The Workforce Profile defined about 60 “soft skills“, which employers seek. They are applicable to any field of work, according to the study, and are the “personal traits and skills that employers state are the most important when selecting employees for jobs of any type.”

TOP 60 SOFT SKILLS IN DIFFERENT WAYS:

1. Math.2. Safety.3. Courtesy.4. Honesty.5. Grammar.6. Reliability.7. Flexibility.8. Team skills.9. Eye contact.10. Cooperation.11. Adaptability.12. Follow rules.13. Self-directed. 14 Good attitudes.15. Writing skills.16. Driver’s license.17. Dependability.18. Advanced math.19. Self-supervising.20. Good references.21. Being drug free.22. Good attendance.23. Personal energy. 24. Work experience.25. Ability to measure.26. Personal integrity.27. Good work history.28. Positive work ethic.29. Interpersonal skills.30. Motivational skills.31. Valuing education.32. Personal chemistry. 33. Willingness to learn.34. Common sense.35. Critical thinking skills.36. Knowledge of fractions.37. Reporting to work on time.38. Use of rulers and calculators.39. Good personal appearance.40. Wanting to do a good job.41. Basic spelling and grammar.42. Reading and comprehension.43. Ability to follow regulations.44. Willingness to be accountable.45. Ability to fill out a job application.46. Ability to make production quotas.47. Basic manufacturing skills training.48. Awareness of how business works.49. Staying on the job until it is finished.50. Ability to read and follow instructions.51. Willingness to work second and third shifts.52. Caring about seeing the company succeed.53. Understanding what the world is all about.54. Ability to listen and document what you have heard.55. Commitment to continued training and learning. 56. Willingness to take instruction and responsibility.57. Ability to relate to coworkers in a close environment.58. Not expecting to become a supervisor in the first six months.59. Willingness to be a good worker and go beyond the traditional eight-hour day. 60. Communication.

BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION:

A manager is someone who organizes a group of people to achieve a given objective. It may be exotic as winning the pennant or an mundane as making sure all of the garbage is picked up, but it remains a job of controlling behaviour to achieve an end. The manager’s role is one of managing people’s behaviour so that both they and the organization prosper. The manager is responsible for scheduling behaviour, prompting it, setting goals for it, measuring it, and evaluating it. The scientific method that resulted in all of the sophisticated technology that today’s manager has at his command, has also been applied to these questions of how to manage. In essence, these labels are interchangeable. They all stand for applied behaviour analysis in industrial-organizational settings.

There are a number of general rules about evoking and measuring behaviour change. For example, we know that the correlation between attitudes or -verbal statements and behaviour is less than ideal so the most accurate measures of behaviour must be sought in direct observation or responses. Similarly, it has been found that ratings of people tend to be so biased by extraneous variables that they fail to reflect the behaviour they intended to measure.

BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION IN ORGANIZATIONS:

Behaviour is a function of its consequences. That is the heart of the behavioral approach if you spend all of your time nagging and criticizing a particular employee; you are likely to find that he comes to work less frequently and avoids you when he is present. Work is punishing to that employee and he will escape it whenever possible. Work behaviour that lead to reward will increase. Those that lead to discomfort will decrease. So it is for every organism including your workers.

If the relationship between the act and the results is the heart of behaviour management, it’s life blood date. An accurate observation of employee behaviour is the evidence that is required before earned reward can be appropriately delivered. It provides the feedback that an employee must have in order to know that he is performing satisfactorily.

MASLOW:The need hierarchy of Abraham Maslow (1943) is perhaps the most widely discussed and researched motivational theory. According to Maslow’s theory, individuals are motivated to act by internal forces which Maslow labels as needs. These needs when activated produce tension within the individual who will then act in a manner to reduce this internal tension, or in Maslow’s terminology “satisfy the need“. Once a need has satisfied, it ceases to be a motivation and another need becomes activated.

HERZBERG:The difficulties in applying Maslow’s theory have not gone unnoticed. Herzberg (1966) attempted to tailor Maslow’s approach to the work environment by identifying organisational factors that corresponded to Maslow’s need. For example, Maslow’s physiological, safety and social needs took on the Hezbergian look of pay, job security, company policy, and supervision. Maslow’s ego and self-actualisation needs were transformed into the organisational factors of achievement, recognition, and responsibility.

EXPECTANCY THEORIES OF MOTIVATION:

Expectancy theorists, rather than attempting to classify and labels factors which influence worker behaviour focused exclusively on examining the process of motivation. Vroom (1964) and Porter and Lawler (1968) tried to specify how organisational factors interact with individual variables to influence a worker to behave in a creating manner.

Based on Lewin’s (1947) hypotheses about motivation, expectations and behaviour, Vroom suggests that motivation is a function of the person’s perceptions of the desirability of the outcomes will be forthcoming (expectancy).

How does one implement a Behavioral Contingency System?

Obviously the first thing to do is to find out if there is a performance problem. As simple as these sounds, it may be most difficult step in the entire process. Being able to identify the problems assumes an ongoing feedback system that includes both qualitative and quantitative data on specific work behaviors.

Guidelines for Implementing Behaviour Management Progaramme: 

Step 1: Observe: Try to identify the crucial productivity behaviors that occur at your place of business. Don’t rush this process or assume that you already know! Give some time to just observing what actually goes on. Avoid just looking for problems.

Step 2: Pinpoint: Your goal at this step is to identify those behaviours that may require change. The keystone of this process is to uncover performance standards for these behaviour if they exist.

Step 3: Record: Take a baseline or baserate to establish the preintervention level of the behaviour that you have pinpointed. Record not only the actively itself but the stimulus conditions under which it occurs, as well as the consequences that follow it for the employee.

References:

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2. Secada, W.G. (1989). Educational Equity versus Equality of Education: An Alternative Conception. In Secada, W.G. (ed.), Equity in Education . New York:Falmer Press.
3. Shah B. (1990). “Research on Tribal Education: Perspectives in Education”, A Journal of the Society for Education Research and Development, Vol. 6, No.3.
4. Singh and Ohri (1993). “Educational Status of Tribal Women in India”