Integrating Life Skills into Teacher Education: Effects of Structured Critical Thinking Training on Prospective Teachers' Performance

Abstract

In today's educational environment, teachers need subject knowledge, teaching skills and life skills that help them engage and manage classrooms effectively and support students’ emotional and educational needs with comparatively limited empirical attention to the integration of life skills—particularly critical thinking—in enhancing teaching performance. This study addresses this gap by examining the effectiveness of structured training modules grounded in critical thinking strategies as a life skill intervention for prospective teachers. An experimental design was used. A sample of 60 prospective teachers from the B.Ed. Colleges were taken from colleges in Sivagangai District. The standardised Performance Scale was used for collecting data on Teaching performance. Descriptive statistics method and paired-sample t-tests were used to analyse data. The findings revealed statistically significant improvements in both groups; however, the experimental group demonstrated markedly greater gains in teaching performance (t = 5.27, p < 0.01) than the control group. Furthermore, a significant difference between post-test scores of the two groups (t = 6.54, p < 0.001) confirms the effectiveness of the intervention. These results provide strong experimental evidence that structured life skills–based training, particularly in critical thinking, substantially enhances teaching performance. The study implies that integrating structured life skills training into teacher education programs can bridge the gap between theoretical preparation and classroom practice, thereby improving instructional quality and professional competence among future teachers.