Ngo Vu Thu Hang¹, Le Ngoc Diem¹, Do Nhu Huong^1,

In the context of Vietnam’s educational reform shifting from content-based to competency-based approaches under the General Education Curriculum 2018, developing life skills for primary students has become a crucial objective. This study aims to develop a Life Skills Competency Framework tailored to the cognitive, emotional, and social characteristics of Vietnamese primary students. Guided by social constructivist theory and the competency-based education approach, the study employs a developmental research design combining document analysis, conceptual generalization, and curriculum content analysis. Domestic and international documents were systematically reviewed, including frameworks by WHO (1993), UNESCO - UNICEF (2003), CASEL (2013), P21 (2015), and OECD (2021). The findings propose an integrated Life Skills Competency Framework consisting of seven core competency domains: communication, collaboration, self-management, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and financial literacy. These domains are structured along three foundational dimensions - cognitive, social, and emotional - reflecting the dialectical relationship between knowledge, attitude, and behavior. The proposed framework aligns with and extends the Vietnamese General Education Curriculum 2018, providing measurable indicators for assessing students’ life skills. It not only bridges theoretical gaps in life skills education at the primary level but also modernizes traditional Confucian values of self-control, empathy, and community responsibility within the context of global citizenship and digital transformation. The framework serves as a scientific and practical foundation for designing life skills education curricula in Vietnamese primary schools.

Life skills education, Competency-based education, Life Skills Competency Framework, Primary education, Vietnamese education reform, Social constructivist theory, Confucian Heritage Culture