Overview
VCE Vocational Major Personal Development Skills (PDS) takes an active approach to personal development, self-realisation and citizenship by exploring interrelationships between individuals and communities. PDS focuses on health, wellbeing, community engagement and social sciences, and provides a framework through which students seek to understand and optimise their potential as individuals and as members of their community.
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What do you do?
Unit 1: | Unit 2: |
Students will focus on the development of personal identity and individual pathways to optimal health and wellbeing. Students will undergo research tasks and use their findings to enhance an understanding of community cohesion, community engagement and how sense of identity may affect outcomes in different contexts. Students will investigate the elements of emotional intelligence and begin to develop an awareness of interrelationships between communities and the health and wellbeing of individuals. | Students focus on the benefits of community participation and how people can work together effectively to achieve a shared goal at a local, national and global level. Students will look at the relationships between active citizenship, empathy and connection to culture, and individual health and wellbeing. They will investigate the barriers and enablers to problem solving within the community. |
Unit 3: | Unit 4: |
Students considers the role of interpersonal skills and social awareness in different settings and contexts. Students will examine leadership qualities and the characteristics of effective leaders and how these qualities can be applied to the achievement of goals within personal and community contexts. They will explore key components of effective teamwork and reflect on how to lead and contribute within a team context through a collaborative problem-solving activity. Students will evaluate individual contribution as well as the overall effectiveness of the team. | Students participate in an extended project relating to a community issue. Students will identify environmental, cultural, economic and social issues affecting the community and select one for an extended community project. Students will engage in a process of planning, implementing and evaluating a response to a selected community issue. Students will present their project to an appropriate audience of peers or community members and evaluate the effectiveness of chosen response to the issue. |