Development of a self learning module for enhancing legal awareness among secondary school students

Abstract

Legal education enhances students' understanding of democratic principles, legal rights, and responsibilities which fosters civic competence and active participation in democratic processes. Secondary school students are in a pivotal period of development, where they may encounter various legal, social, health, and psychological risks. Nowadays, school students face challenges such as cybercrimes, substance abuse, and gender-based violence. Unfortunately, the components that can create legal awareness are comparatively inadequate in our school curriculum and educational activities. An aftermath of this problem is that, our young generation is unable to understand the legal problems of day-to-day life and to respond legally. Furthermore, according to the National and State Crime Record Bureaus, the number of crimes committed against children is increasing on a daily basis. In such circumstances, it is apparent that children should be given legal awareness which becomes relevant to lead a democratic and responsible life. Thus, the study aims to construct and validate a Self Learning Module on Legal Awareness for enhancing Legal Awareness among secondary school students in Kerala. The study was carried out in four phases such as content analysis, survey phase, development of module, and experimentation. The study focused on experimental method, content analysis and survey method were adopied as a part of need analysis. The sample consisted of 783 secondary school students from 14 districts of Kerala for the survey phase and a sample of 31 secondary school students for experimentation. The content analysis of Social Science textbooks at secondary level revealed that the content on legal aspects related to children is insufficient in the textbooks.The analysis of level of Legal Awareness among secondary students indicated that secondary school students are having low level of Legal Awareness for the total sample and subgroups based on gender, locale of schools, and type of management of schools. Results also indicated that the female secondary school students have higher Legal Awareness when compared to male secondary school students. Furthermore, there is no significant difference in the mean scores of the Legal Awareness among urban and rural secondary school students as well as government and aided secondary school students. Results also indicated that the developed Self Learning Module on Legal Awareness is effective for enhancing Legal Awareness among secondary school students. Thus, legal awareness programmes can prevent the young generation from becoming victims of harassment and they can make more informed choices as well as gain greater awareness of their rights and responsibilities within a legal framework.