The availability of life skills in the civics textbooks at the middle education stages in Yemen and the ability of students to obtain such skills from the teacher's viewpoint. الباحثة: آلاء شيخان السقاف*

Abstract

This study aims basically to identify the extent of availability of life skills regarding the civics books at the middle education stages in Yemen and find out the extent of acquiring such skills by the students from the teacher's viewpoint. The researcher has adopted the descriptive and analytical approach as she prepared a list of the life skills to analyze the civics textbooks for seventh, eighth, and ninth classes, divided into nine basic points, as follows: (Communication & contact skills, problem-solving skills, time management skills, decisions-taking skills, critical thinking skills, affiliation skills, security & safety skills, social skills, and personal skills). In addition, a questionnaire to identify the extent to which middle education students can acquire the life skills presented in the civics textbooks from the teacher's viewpoint. Research approaches were testified and verified using the study sample, consisting of the civics textbooks for (the seventh, eighth, and ninth classes) and all civics subject teachers for the middle education stages in Mukalla district (193 teachers). The study has revealed the following results the civics textbooks for the basic education levels, including (the seventh, eighth, and ninth classes) are extremely less interesting in terms of life skills, poor level of acquiring the life skills in the civics textbooks by the students of basic education from the point of view of teachers with a percentage of (56.2%), the scope of the personal skills took the first rank from the point of view of the teachers with a percentage of (64.8%), while the critical thinking skills took the last rank in terms of the life skills with a percentage of (51.13%). The researcher gave her recommendation based upon the results revealed from this study; she recommended adopting the issue of life skills when planning for the textbooks, furthermore asking the teachers (males & females) of civics and sociology to focus more and more on life skills in terms of its different basic topics during the educational process.
Keywords: Life skills – Civics