Development of Life Skills Program for Primary School Students: Focus on Entry Programming

Abstract

There are areas where the competencies obtained through computer coding activities substantially overlap with life skills components. Studies of these common competencies have suggested the possibility of including these contents in a life skills program. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a program through the Entry program that elementary school students could use online to improve their life skills, given the need to increase contactless online classes due to COVID-19. Eight elementary school teachers with 20 years of experience and two curriculum experts participated in the program’s development. For data collection, 360 data points were collected from eight elementary schools located in each Korean province, including urban and rural areas. SPSS 21.0 was used to analyze the data. Upon completing the 8-week program, the difference in life skills between groups was confirmed using variance analysis based on the number of implementation times, and post-hoc testing was conducted. The study’s results confirmed the difference between the groups conducted for two weeks (M = 3.22), four weeks (M = 3.25), and six weeks (M = 3.67), and the group conducted for eight weeks (M = 3.83). In other words, as the number of weeks of participation in the life skills program increased, there was a difference between groups. These findings suggest a life skills program could be included as part of Entry based computer coding activities for elementary school students through a backward curriculum. In conclusion, this study showed the possibility of using contactless online classes with free Entry-based websites to improve the life skills of elementary school students struggling at home due to COVID-19. It also showed that each elementary school teacher could operate the life skills programs as a contactless learning method using a free coding platform and manual.