The impact of holistic education on value preference social competence and leadership skills of engineering students

Abstract

Students usually begin their academic journey in college or university during the late adolescence (17-20 years). In this dynamic period of lifespan, they are highly vulnerable to the limitations in personality development related issues of gender, self-esteem, competition, and cultural membership which may result in many challenges in life. Viewing positively, students at this age could be trained for integral growth holistically. Holistic education involves the complete and solid formation of every aspect of a student s personality. Its goal is to nurture individuals to be intellectually competent, spiritually mature, morally upright, psychologically integrated, physically healthy and socially acceptable (CMI Vision, 1991). Hence, the focus is to enable an individual to go beyond the acquisition, generation and application of knowledge but to transcend to higher realms of self-development, social integration and contribution. Thus, Holistic Education makes an attempt to take one through various aspects of personal, interpersonal and social dimensions of human life, and finally, helps individuals to understand the reality of life to live fully as human beings. This study was embarked to assess the impact of Holistic Education on the value preference, social competence, and leadership skills of engineering students. newlineThe research design was single group pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test experimental design. The researcher developed and standardised the Holistic Education curriculum with the support of the relevant literature and the subject experts. A pilot study was conducted on first year engineering students to get hands-on experience of the programme and to assess the impact of the facilitative tool. For the present intervention, 55 students from the first-year engineering class of a university in Bengaluru were selected using stratified random sampling method.