Arab Educational Information Network

The study aimed to know the reality of including life skills in the course of social studies for the first grade of middle school in Saudi Arabia and to achieve the objectives of the study. The researcher prepared a list of life skills related to social studies that included five main axes: communication and socializing skills, higher thinking skills, citizenship skills, decision-making skills, time management skills, which included (37) life skills. The researcher used a descriptive-analytical method and the sample of the study consisted of the student and activity books for the first and second semester. The most important results of the study showed that the inclusion of life skills came to a low degree. The most important results of the study showed that the degree of life skills was low, and the study concluded that the higher-order thinking skills were the first (37.8%), followed by the skills of citizenship (31%), and communication and socializing skills were (14.4%), while all remaining skills were low as time management skills were (9.7%) and the decision-making skills were (7%), it also found that there was no balance in the distribution of life skills between the books of two semesters (the first and the second). The study recommended several recommendations, the most important of which are: the inclusion of life skills in the courses of social studies in the first grade of the middle school and distribute them appropriately to achieve succession and integration between its units and the rest of the courses in the middle school, and the concentration of teachers on the developing of life skills and their different axes during the teaching and learning processes. (Published abstract)