Effect of Philosophy for Children Curriculum on Life Skills Development in Fifth Grade Students Attending Public Elementary Schools in Behbahan

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of philosophy for children (P4C) in the development of life skills in elementary school students. The research method was semi-experimental using pre-test and post-test with control group. The statistical population involved all the fifth-grade male students in public elementary schools in the city of Behbahan, Khuzestan, Iran, in the academic year 2022-2023, whose number was1409. Using the available sampling method, 60 students who scored lower on the life skills scale were selected and randomly divided into two experimental (30 people) and control (30 people) groups. In the next step, the experimental group was taught philosophy for 12 sessions of 45 minutes. The data collection tool was Saatchi et al.’s Life Skills Scale (2010). To analyze the data, univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance methods were used. According to the results, the use of philosophy for children has a positive and significant effect on the development of life skills (P<0.001, F=74.073), self-awareness skills (P<0.001, F=49.792), empathy (001 P<0.00, F=27.996), relationship management skills (P<0.001, F=84.163), communication skills (P<0.001, F=45.082), stress management and emotional management skills (P<0.001, F=46/441), goal-setting skill (P<0.001, F=40/492), problem solving skill (F=60/400, P<0/001), decision making skill (F=35/571, P<0/001) =), creative thinking skill (P<0.001, F=24.805) and critical thinking skill (P<0.001, F=65.750) in the considered students.