In 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a report developed by the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). Entitled "Learning a Living", the report identifies the skills and competencies necessary for the workplace and outlines how to incorporate them into American schools. In addition, the Commission issued several other reports addressing such issues as building community coalitions and giving anecdotes from schools currently using the SCANS ideas in their work.

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SCANS Competencies and Foundations

SCANS Publications

How to Use SCANS

SCANS Competencies and Foundations

The know-how identified by SCANS is made up of five competencies and a three-part foundation of skills and personal qualities needed for solid job performance.

COMPETENCIES

Effective workers can productively use:

4 Resources: allocating time, money, materials, space, staff;

4 Interpersonal Skills: working on teams, teaching others, serving customers, leading, negotiating, and working well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds;

4 Information: acquiring and evaluating data, organizing and maintaining files, interpreting and communicating, and using computers to process information;

4 Systems: understanding social, organizational, and technological systems, monitoring and correcting performance, and designing or improving systems;

4 Technology: selecting equipment and tools, applying technology to specific tasks, and maintaining and troubleshooting technologies.

FOUNDATION

Competence requires:

4 Basic Skills: reading, writing, arithmetic and mathematics, speaking and listening;

4 Thinking Skills: thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, seeing things in the mind’s eye, knowing how to learn, and reasoning;

4 Personal Qualities: individual responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management and integrity."

For a more complete digest of the report, go to http://www.academicinnovations.com/report.html . To visit the Department of Labor website, go to http://www.dol.gov

 SCANS Publications

Copies of the following Commission reports are available from: Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954.

q Learning A Living: A Blueprint for High Performance (SCANS final report)

q What Work Requires of Schools (SCANS initial report)

q Lo Que Trabajo Necesita de las Escuelas

q Skills and Tasks for Jobs (Resource for developing curricula to teach SCANS skills and competencies)

q Teaching the SCANS Competencies (Explanation of skills and competencies. Ideas for incorporating it into the curriculum).

• Look at the competencies and skills above and answer the following questions:
  • 4 "How much practice do the students in our district get in developing these?"
  • 4 "Are students able to apply this learning to the school work, between courses, to their daily activities?"

  Identify areas that need improvement.

  For further discussion, visit the "Collective Reflection on the Changing Workplace" website, hosted by the Cultural Human Resources Council of the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada. http://www.reflection.gc.ca. The web site provides all users of Internet with an opportunity to share their experiences, express their views and openly discuss all questions on this topic. The Advisory on the Changing Workplace, chaired by the Canadian Minister of Labour, undertakes public consultations to identify concerns, possibilities, expectations, experiences and choices of the public vis-à-vis the rapidly changing workplace.

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