Abstract:

Social and emotional skills are the two most important keys that represent people in many aspects of their lives, and they are acquired by people and learned by them throughout their lifetime and reflect all activities performed throughout the day starting from home to school to work-life. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is a worldwide foundation that works on improving children and young people’s social and emotional development and consists of members from all over thirty-seven countries. The context of the study consists of family, school, peers and the community as a whole. Overall fifteen social and emotional skills are pointed out in the study. And the most important life outcomes discussed are about education, conduct and health. Throughout the study, first thing is to observe the connection between students’ homes, school, community environment and their social and emotional skills. Generation Y (millennials) are those born between the years 1980 to 2000 and have grown through the technology and internet and are very experienced at it. The characteristics of the Y generation are countless and some of which consists of being confident, multi-tasker, ambitious, and hard-workers. They have been raised with the continuous attention and support of their parents who would always tell them how they are doing so the Y generation expects the same from their surroundings. They believe that education is a very important part in their lives as it is the lead of success while their expectations are different from the previous generations as they are a modern and technology generation. Use of technology and having the same flexibility during education for the millennials is necessary for their better education and motivation. Generation Y get motivated even more when they get praises and are told how they are doing and this also applies to better education for them. For teachers to be able to provide and create a suitable environment for the Y generation education, the use of technology should be available for the students. The Y generation have newly entered the workplace and are known to be hard workers and determined at their work. It’s important that they are coached and told how a certain job is done rather than being directed around as they don’t like to be ordered around. Generation Y prefers communication via the internet rather than face to face and this might be the main reason they have challenges on proper social and emotional skills. The importance of understanding the contribution of the development of social and emotional skills to the quality of education and work life amongst the generation Y and the ways for improving these skills must be reviewed in the concept of the OECD study.

Keywords:

Social skills, Emotional skills, OECD, Generation Y.