Life education in Taiwan: School experiences, challenges and prospects

In response to various social problems in a fast-changing post-modern society, life education has been advocated and put on the educational agenda in Taiwan. Thanks to continuous and collaborative efforts and years of promotion, life education has made significant progress. Recently, the content of life education has become a major component of core competencies in the curriculum guidelines of the 12-years basic education. This chapter aims to demonstrate and discuss the “fruit” of the development of life education in Taiwan, in terms of the training of qualified teachers, curriculum design and development, and its implementation in schools of different levels. Although a favourable environment has been provided for life education, there are still some challenges to be faced in the future, including teacher development for life education, incorporation of life education and school curriculum, and nurturing school culture for life education. It is believed that continuous effort should be made to explore an effective way to integrate life education into more formal, informal, and hidden curricula. Copyright © 2021 selection and editorial matter, John Chi-Kin Lee, Stephen Yam-Wing Yip and Raymond Ho-Man Kong; individual chapters, the contributors.