LIFE SKILLS AS A COMPONENT OF PERSONAL COMPETENCE OF STUDENTS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES

Abstract

Competency-based education involves the integration of knowledge, skills, and abilities into students’ experiences in order to transform them into relevant competencies. Life skills are considered as a component of a person’s holistic life competencies. In correctional psychopedagogy, the following terms are used as synonyms for life skills: «social competence», «social skills», «social and labor skills», «vital skills», «life competence». The formation of life skills in students with intellectual disabilities occurs in the educational process based on educational material. Thanks to the competency-based approach, students have the opportunity to simultaneously study new material, learn to reason, act practically, look for effective ways to solve problem situations, and establish interaction with peers. Mastering practical life skills is provided for in the correctional and developmental component of education for children with special needs. For students with intellectual disabilities, life skills are very important as they contribute to their adaptation to independent living and social integration. The publication highlights the features of the formation of life skills in students with intellectual disabilities: determining the content of life skills should be based on the characteristics of the psychophysical development of children, the degree of their impairment, existing complications, and the level of support; the life skills of this category of children are not formed by imitation, but require special corrective pedagogical influence; life skills should be formed in a coordinated manner in the system: in lessons through the implementation of correctional goals, in correctional and developmental classes, during educational work, in the process of implementing regime moments; consolidating life skills in students with intellectual disabilities should be carried out not only at school, but also in the family; parents should be taught techniques for building life skills in children. The urgency of the problem requires targeted training of specialists to implement these tasks in professional activities.