Increasing the Effectiveness of Life Skills Curriculum through Creation of Constructive Learning Environments: A Case of Anger Management Skills

Considering the importance of teaching life skills and the fact that anger management is one of these skills, the present study aims to compare constructive teaching method and current method (developed by the State Welfare Organization) for anger management. The research used experimental method and pretest-posttest control-group design. The statistical population consisted of students who attended the anger management courses held by the Counseling Center of the University of Mazandaran. There was significant differences between the two methods, namely constructive teaching and current, regarding their impacts on the attitude of the two groups towards learning environment and mode of education (F(46,7)=5.07, P=0.000, Wilk's Lambda=0.564), as well as the satisfaction of the two groups of the course (F(50,3)=16.40, P=0.000 Wilk's Lambda=0.504). The group receiving anger management training with constructive method had more positive attitude towards anger management and expressed higher satisfaction of the course. Moreover, other findings showed that the group trained using constructive method learned anger management better than the other group (F(51,1)=15.65, P=0.000). The results of the study showed that teaching in constructive environments was more effective in anger management due to its higher flexibility and ability to foster deeper learning. Therefore, it is recommended to apply this approach in developing life skills curricula.