Teaching life skills through arts; an option for adolescent health promotion in resource poor settings

Abstract

Background Life skills education for adolescents has been incorporated to curriculums and health promotion programmes in several countries including Sri Lanka. However, a uniformly recognized evidence based method for teaching life skills is not available. A novel art based life skills teaching method that takes into account the vulnerabilities of and opportunities available for individual participants, was used for health promotion of adolescents in a resource poor setting. Methods A two hour programme with two drawing activities was conducted in a rural school in Anuradhapura. Session was planned to empower students to overcome the problems detected through key informant interviews. Voluntary anonymous written feedback was obtained at the end. Drawings were analyzed to identify themes. Thematic analysis on the feedback data was compared with contextual data for triangulation. Results Participants were 22 girls and 20 boys aging 13 to 16 years. The first activity changed the formal attire of the session. Preferred future occupation, personal appearance, assets, work place/work environment, vision for life and life events were the themes that could be identified in the second drawings. During discussions students themselves came up with life skills as solutions for defeating obstacles. Response rate for feedback was 62%. Perception on the programme, perceived outcomes from the programme and their futuristic views were mostly positive according to feedback. Discussion The new art based programme can provide an effective individualized active learning experience. It requires minimal resources, infrastructure, time and prior preparation making it suitable for low resource settings. However, long-term outcomes need to be assessed objectively.