Life skills and teaching skills: a correlational study of prospective teacher

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Basically, humans on this earth have the instinct to always maintain their lives using various ways. Humans can do this if they have skills or abilities, which are called life skills. Life skills in principle can be interpreted as how a person can activate and move positive values and competencies to be implemented optimally (Mislaini, 2017). This skill is also defined as the ability to show positive-adaptive behavior that supports a person in dealing with every problem and challenge in life (Mahmoudi and Moshayedi, 2012).
Education is the most important aspect in creating and preparing the best people for the progress of Indonesia (Antika and Haikal, 2019). In relation to education, life skills should be important skills to be empowered by students, including at the university level. One of the important targets is prospective teacher student. The 21st century teacher does not only act as a provider of new knowledge to students. Today, the teacher is a consultant, advisor, friend, researcher, and so on (Gopinath and Palaniyandi, 2019). Teachers and prospective teachers should receive life skills training because teachers and prospective teachers have many contributions to the development of students. Life skills are closely related to teacher mastery of teaching skills. Today's teachers are expected to develop life skills because they can help them face future learning challenges with the confidence to become professional teachers (Chauhan, 2016).
Teaching skills are the key to success in learning. Teaching skills are also explained as teaching technical skills that are applied by teachers or prospective teachers effectively in order to provide the expected learning to students (Kumari and Naik, 2016). In relation to teaching strategies, strategy is knowledge of the pedagogy and tactics of a teacher in overcoming various situations and changes in the classroom during learning (Jiang et al., 2016). Empowerment of teaching skills in this study was carried out by training, habituation, and example in the form of micro teaching activities.
Life skills were measured using a life skills assessment, which consisted of four skills, namely: interpersonal skills, shared goal setting and accomplishment, responsibility, and managing (Greenstein, 2012). The teaching skills were measured based on Antika and Haikal (2019) in the form of an assessment of teaching skills with four aspects of assessment, namely: opening of learning, implementation of core learning, closing of learning, and aspects of supporting learning.
No previous research has clearly revealed the correlation between life skills and teaching skills. Whereas research on the correlation of these two variables is very important to study in order to find information on the contribution of life skills to learning skills to keep up with learning developments in the 21st century and the challenges of the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Research on life skills is still limited to empowering students in general, while the discussion about its correlation with teaching skills on prospective teacher student has not been clearly disclosed. Empowerment of life skills needs to be empowered to students, especially prospective teacher student. Empowerment of life skills is expected to be able to contribute to students in preparing themselves to become professional teachers (teaching skills) in the real world, including carrying out learning innovations that are in accordance with current developments.

RESEARCH METHODS
The implementation of this research was carried out from March to June 2019, or lectures in the second semester of the 2018/2019 academic year. This research was conducted with the subject of fourth semester students, S1 Biology Education, FKIP, Universitas Islam Madura (UIM) Pamekasan. This research is a quantitative research with a correlational design. Life skills are predictors (X) and teaching skills are criteria (Y), which can be seen in Figure 1. This research was conducted in the Teaching and Learning Strategies course, where students carried out the fulfillment of a major task, namely micro teaching. Prospective teacher student prepared a simple teaching plan that contains activities in the introduction, core activities, and closing of the lesson. The assessment of life skills and teaching skills is carried out in the learning process and micro teaching. Measurement of life skills was done by giving a score on the life skills assessment sheet adapted from Greenstein (2012). On the life skills assessment sheet, there are four aspects of skills assessed, namely interpersonal skills, skills to set goals and common achievements, responsibilities, and management skills. The four skills have score levels with different indicators, namely score 4 (exemplary), score 3 (proficient), score 2 (basic), and score 1 (novice). Teaching skills were measured by giving a score according to the teaching skills scoring sheet which has four indicators, namely: 1) opening, 2) learning core activities, 3) closing, and 4) supporting aspects.
Normality test and data homogeneity test were carried out before hypothesis testing. The normality test was carried out with Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, while the homogeneity test was carried out with the Levene test. The hypothesis testing was carried out using a simple regression correlation analysis technique with a significance level of 0.05 (P <0.05) using life skills and teaching skills data. Data and hypothesis testing were carried out with SPSS 22.0 for Windows. The results of the analysis provide information about the correlation between life skills and teaching skills.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Indonesia now has a big agenda, namely improving Human Resources (HR) which was conveyed in a speech by the President of the Republic of Indonesia, Joko Widodo. Efforts to increase human resources certainly need to be proportional to the provision of various skills. This is inseparable from the role of education as a forum for empowering skills and knowledge, including at the university level. One of the skills that are required to be possessed by teachers and prospective teachers are life skills and teaching skills. This research focused on the study of the correlation between life skills and teaching skills of prospective teacher students. Data on student life skills and teaching skills in this study are the result of conversion from raw scores to scores with a scale of 100.
The results of the hypothesis test showed that there was a significant correlation between life skills and teaching skills for prospective biology teacher students. The results of the regression analysis regarding the correlation of life skills with teaching skills are in Table 1. Summary of ANOVA listed in Table 2 gives p-value = 0.000; means p-value < a (a = 0.05). The significance number gives the conclusion that life skills are able to predict and explain student teaching skills. In other words, life skills have a significant correlation with student teaching skills. The results of the regression equation analysis of the correlation between life skills and teaching skills of prospective teacher students can be seen in Table 3.

Model
Unstandardized  Table 3 provides information regarding the equation of the correlation regression line between life skills and teaching skills, namely Y = 59.608 + 0.296X. The constant value of 59.608 means that the amount of teaching skills will be worth 59.608 if the life skills value is 0. The coefficient value b = 0.296, which means that for every 1 (one) increase in life skills, the teaching skills increase by 0.296. The correlation graph of life skills and teaching skills can be seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Correlation between Life Skills and Teaching Skills
The results of this study indicate that the empowerment of life skills is very important to support the teaching skills of prospective teacher students. These results cannot be separated from the notion of life skills as skills for adaptive and positive behavior that allow a person to face every challenge in life (Mahmoudi and Moshayedi, 2012). Class observations (in micro teaching activities) were used to improve the quality of education through information about the practice of prospective teachers or evaluating changes in teaching practice (UNESCO, 2016). Prospective teachers are expected to be able to develop the essence of life skills construction which not only helps in facing challenges in life with confidence, but also to train their students in the future to utilize life skills in personal and professional life (Prema et al., 2013). In the 21st century, teachers and prospective teachers are required to continuously improve teaching skills (Seidman, 2012), this means that teachers and prospective teachers are able to change and improve old teaching skills by teaching methods that are relevant to today's developments. This makes it clear that life skills greatly support the achievement of teachers in adapting to changes in learning.
In life skills, there are shared goal setting and accomplishment skills (Greenstein, 2012), where these skills are also found in teaching skills in the second assessment aspect, namely carrying out core activities, on indicators of material/concept accuracy (the material presented supports the achievement of Basic Competencies/ KD) (Antika and Haikal, 2019). There are other aspects that are found in both life skills and teaching skills, namely: problem-solving skills, decision-making abilities, and communication skills (Abdi and Davoudi, 2015). The number of similarity aspects of skills further strengthens the significance of the correlation of the two variables.
Life skills provide the ability for prospective teachers to solve problems (Abdi and Davoudi, 2015), especially problems in learning, for example a prospective teacher must be skilled in managing class discussions (Kim et al., 2019). Life skills improve psychosocial competence (Vranda and Rao, 2011), enhance social development, emotional adjustment (Roodbari et al., 2013), and have a positive relationship with a teacher's level of self-efficacy (Prema et al., 2013). These skills are summed up by the researcher as a standard of ability and requirements to meet the demands of successful teaching and life.
When teachers and prospective teachers have a positive attitude towards their work, they will feel high self-efficacy and commitment to work, so the class becomes a fun place (Bailey et al., 2013). Positive conditions will also create positive results, so the researchers concluded that teachers and prospective teacher student who have life skills will be better able to apply teaching skills well in learning. It is proven that the improvement of life skills is followed by the increase of teaching skills of prospective teacher students.

CONCLUSION
This study revealed that there was a significant correlation between life skills and teaching skills of prospective teacher students. Life skills can be summed up as a standard of ability and requirements to meet the demands of teaching success and life, including for prospective teachers in applying teaching skills well. These results are relevant that life skills are closely related to other skills that can be empowered through the educational process. Further research can be carried out by considering other variables besides life skills that can explain the teaching skills of prospective teachers.