Infusing students’ everyday experiences in classrooms: a case study of classroom conversations in life skills education

In recent years, the importance of developing instructional designs in schools to enhance students’ life skills has received increased attention. Placing life skills related issues on the curriculum implies that students’ personal lives and experiences are being given a more prominent role in education. However, while existing empirical studies have revealed valuable insights into aspects relevant to the practice of teaching life skills, there is lack of research on how teachers guide students in situ within life skills education settings. In this study, we explore how teachers orient to students’ personal experiences, ideas and assumptions from their everyday lives during classroom conversations in the context of life skills education. Specifically, we examine the opportunities and challenges teachers might face in this type of instructional work. Our analysis draws on video data from a life skills project in which lower secondary school students and their teachers engaged in classroom conversations about issues related to youth, identity and belonging. The analysis shows (1) how the teachers sometimes used students’ personal experiences as resources for guiding their conceptual understanding, (2) the efforts required of teachers to handle emotional and sometimes sensitive student contributions in whole-class conversations and (3) the challenges teachers sometimes faced in integrating conceptual knowledge with students’ everyday experiences. We discuss these findings in relation to the existing literature.