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Frameworks for Planning Workforce Education: SCANS Commission (Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills)
In 1992 the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills
surveyed a group of business and education leaders to identify the skills that
adults needed for success in the workplace. The group named five workplace
competencies and three foundation skills.
Workplace Competencies
- Resources: allocating time, money, materials, space, staff;
- Interpersonal skills: working on teams, teaching others, serving customers,
leading, negotiating, and working well with people from culturally diverse
backgrounds.
- Information: acquiring and evaluating data; organizing and maintaining files,
interpreting information, and using computers to process information.
- Systems: understanding social, organizational, and technological systems,
monitoring and correcting performance, and designing or improving systems.
- Technology: selecting equipment and tools, applying technology to specific
tasks, and maintaining and troubleshooting technologies.
Foundation Skills
- Basic Skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and mathematics.
- Thinking Skills: thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems,
seeing things in the mind's eye, knowing how to learn, and reasoning.
- Personal Qualities: individual responsibility, self-esteem, sociability,
self-management and integrity.
You can read the SCANS reports on line at the
U.S.Department of Labor Web site.
The SCANS Commission did not provide specific instructions on how to incorporate
its skills into lessons; however, many adult learning agencies have used these
skills as a focus for their lessons.
- The Spring Institute for International Studies has been designated by the
Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and the Colorado Refugee Services
Program (CRSP) to provide technical assistance for English Language Training (ELT)
programs serving refugees. The
ELT Web site
provides lesson plans based on SCANS workplace competencies. Lessons were
designed for second language learners.
- The Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS) has correlated its life
skills competencies to the SCANS foundations skills and workplace competencies
(CASAS 1996).
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