PALS – Play and Life Skills: Play as an Opportunity for Developing Life Skills

In free play settings, children from four to eight years of age acquire, in addition to concrete situational play competencies, a series of generic skills that can be summarized under the keyword of life skills. Three concepts are central to the theoretical framing of the concept of these life skills: the OECD Learning Framework 2030 (2018), the United Nations’ perspective (2006), and the World Health Organization’s understanding of life skills (1999). The skills as described by UNICEF, UNESCO and the WHO can be further broken down into concrete skills: problem solving, critical thinking, effective communication, decision making, creative thinking, interpersonal relationships, building self-awareness, empathy and coping with stress and emotions (United Nations, 2006, p. 1). The PALS project explores the life skills that children acquire in different play settings on various levels. Free play is understood as an act of intrinsic motivation of a voluntary nature with the actual play process itself and the positive emotions that are connected. The project incorporated the development of various elements for teacher training in co-creation with universities in Serbia, the Republic of North Macedonia, and Switzerland, producing manuals for students, lecturers and teachers, and creating a series of teaching videos and training modules for the University. An accompanying study investigated the underlying attitudes and learning processes at the level of participating students, lecturers and teachers (and, to a certain extent, pupils and parents) both quantitatively and qualitatively.