The Secretary's Commission on
Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS)
This commission was asked to "examine the demands of the
workplace and whether our young people are capable of meeting
those demands." The SCANS report, released in June of 1991,
identifies the skills needed for employment, an acceptable
level of proficiency, effective ways to assess proficiency, and
a dissemination strategy for schools, businesses, and homes.
The report defines the foundation of work-place know-how, which
is included below.
A THREE-PART FOUNDATION
Basic Skills: Reads, writes, performs arithmetic and
mathematical operations, listens and speaks
- Reading--locates, understands, and interprets written
information in prose and in documents such as manuals, graphs,
and schedules
- Writing--communicates thoughts, ideas, information, and
messages in writing; and creates documents such as letters,
directions, manuals, reports, graphs, and flow charts
- Arithmetic/Mathematics--performs basic computations and
approaches practical problems by choosing appropriately from a
variety of mathematical techniques
- Listening--receives, attends to, interprets, and responds
to verbal messages and other cues
- Speaking--organizes ideas and communicates orally
Thinking Skills: Thinks creatively, makes decisions,
solves problems, visualizes, knows how to learn, and reasons
- Creative Thinking--generates new ideas
- Decision Making--specifies goals and constraints, generates
alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best
alternative
- Problem Solving--recognizes problems and devises and
implements plan of action
- Seeing Things in the Mind's Eye--organizes, and processes
symbols, pictures, graphs, objects, and other information
- Knowing How to Learn--uses efficient learning techniques to
acquire and apply new knowledge and skills
- Reasoning--discovers a rule or principle underlying the
relationship between two or more objects and applies it when
solving a problem
Personal Qualities: Displays responsibility,
self-esteem, sociability, self-management, and integrity and
honesty
- Responsibility--exerts a high level of effort and
perseveres towards goal attainment
- Self-Esteem--believes in own self-worth and maintains a
positive view of self
- Sociability--demonstrates understanding, friendliness,
adaptability, empathy, and politeness in group settings
- Self-Management--assesses self accurately, sets personal
goals, monitors progress, and exhibits self-control
- Integrity/Honesty--chooses ethical courses of action
Taken from:
The Secretary's Commission on Achieveing Necessary Skills.
(1991). What work requires of schools: A SCANS report for
America 2000. Wasington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor.
(pp. xv, xviii)
To find
out more about the SCANS report, click here TO LEAVE THE CASE
and go to the SCANS web site.]
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