A rationale is offered for including life skills in curricula for students with special needs. Life skills are defined as encompassing daily living, personal/social, and occupational skills. Daily living skills include: managing personal finances, selecting and managing a household, caring for personal needs, safety awareness, preparing and…

Designed as part of the Life Centered Career Education Curriculum, the book describes activities for use with elementary and middle school students with and without disabilities. The Life Centered Career Education Curriculum organizes 22 major competencies and 102 subcompetencies into three domains: daily living skills, personal-social skills, and…

Stay-in-School is a Canadian government initiative launched in the early 1990's encouraging young Canadians to build a solid foundation for the future by finishing high school and by acquiring the skills needed for the labor force of tomorrow. Three fundamental principles guided the initiative: (1) compassion, caring, and commitment are essential…

The book provides suggestions for activities designed to infuse life skills into the basic curriculum for adolescents and older students with disabilities. Modeled after the Life Centered Career Education approach, the book presents activities geared to three domains (sample competencies in parentheses): (1) daily living skills (managing family…

The demographic characteristics of teenaged parents reveal a majority who are aged 18-21, live in poverty, have dropped out of school, and are unemployed and unmarried. Their potential for high school graduation is often dependent upon their support network and life course adaptation. Employment patterns of teen parents show high unemployment and…

This Digest examines how Comprehensive School Health Programs (CSHPs) may promote stress management in children and adolescents. CSHPs contain four key elements. The first element, community participation and focus, can be achieved through school health newsletters, health fairs, local newspaper, radio, and television promotions, and guest…

The research brief on community-based instruction for individuals with severe disabilities is based on a manual for practitioners titled "Designing Community-Based Instructional Programming" developed at the University of Utah. The manual stresses the importance of preparing students for community participation by providing instruction in the…

Many handicapped workers fail in competitive employment situations for social reasons rather than for the inability to perform required work tasks. Such individuals are usually those who need to be trained under conditions more closely matching those of the workplace. Thus, work-related social skills should be taught, at least in part, in work…

Parents have a major influence on their children's attitudes toward work and life. Handicapped youth, who have more difficulty than other youth in making the transition from school to work and adult life, have a special need for parental guidance. Parents can play key roles in transition, especially in the areas of career exploration, job search…

Recently, the definition of functional literacy has been broadened to include the completion of a secondary education or its equivalent. This definition focuses on obtaining the functional competencies required to perform adequately in adult life. Three major sets of functional competencies are represented in models developed by the Adult…

Emerging perspectives on numeracy and their social, cultural, and political implications provide a context for new ways of thinking about adult numeracy instruction. Beyond daily living skills, numeracy is now being defined as knowledge that empowers citizens for life in their particular society. Thus, numeracy has economic, social, and political…

This book deals with several aspects of teaching everyday survival skills to adult English as a second language (ESL) students. The basic orientation of the book is based on a determination of skills students need to cope in a community. This determination involves consideration of the skills the community requires, the skills the students lack,…

This guide offers ideas for adult literacy curriculum development using a participatory approach. Its intent is not to prescribe a curriculum but to raise issues associated with the varied needs of limited-literacy students and with development of curricula to address these needs. An introductory section discusses how the guide evolved and can be…

This book describes the unique educational program established in 1980 for United States-bound refugees in Southeast Asia. It analyzes the forces that led to the launching of the program and discusses some of its most innovative practices. Written by the program planners and educators, the book focuses on the following: providing instruction in…

Written for rural educators, this handbook provides practical guidelines for working with rural youth who will be seeking jobs in urban areas. The suggested learning activities can be used for an independent course, integrated into existing programs, or applied in counseling. The introduction discusses needs of rural students and relates positive…