If your answer is YES, and if you believe decision-making deserves a more intentional place in education, this paper is for you to read and support.
Education prepares its learners to navigate and sail smoothly through life. Life skills which schools and the educational sector inculcates in them will be their biggest tool during the sail. Life-skills frameworks identify decision-making, problem-solving, critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, empathy, self-awareness and coping skills as important competencies for effective functioning. For achieving the above goal, they will have to analyse demands, choices and responsibilities of everyday life through effective decision making. Although decision-making is generally positioned as one life skill among several, this paper proposes that it can be conceptualised as a foundational and integrative life-skill competency through which cognitive, social-emotional and practical skills are translated into purposeful action.
The paper examines the role of decision-making in the development of life competence and argues that its systematic development should begin during middle school, when learners increasingly explore independency. They also experience self-direction, self-reliance, peer influence, academic choices and everyday responsibilities. The paper further examines the potential of Home Science as an experiential context for developing decision-making through authentic situations involving all the major areas from the subject of Home Science. Namely food and nutrition, resource management, consumer choices, clothing, health, human development, safety, sustainability and household responsibilities.
Drawing upon the author's doctoral research on Home Science as a Transdisciplinary Subject for Developing Life Skills among School Students in Noida, the paper uses existing empirical findings regarding stakeholder awareness, perceptions of life skills, gender-neutrality and the availability of Home Science to contextualise the argument. It further examines the potential of Kaushal Bodh and a Parent Calendar as complementary mechanisms for developing and transferring decision-making competence. Kaushal Bodh can provide opportunities for experiential decision-making within school, while structured Parent Calendar activities can extend such experiences into authentic home contexts.
The paper proposes a Decision-Making Learning Cycle—Identify, Explore, Compare, Choose, Act and Reflect—and a developmental progression from everyday decisions to practical, social, academic and life-course decisions. Play, simulations, role-play, decision cards, budgeting challenges, decision trees, escape-room activities and changing-variable scenarios are proposed as age-appropriate pedagogies. The paper concludes that Home Science can be repositioned as a “Decision Laboratory” in which learners repeatedly practise making informed choices, evaluating consequences and reflecting on outcomes. Such an approach can help bridge the gap between knowing and doing and prepare students not merely for employment or examinations, but for responsible and independent living.
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