The Challenge :: Education School Teaching Learning Essays

The Challenge The SCANS report challenged schools, parents, and businesses to help all students develop competencies in the basic skills, thinking skills, and personal qualities required for work in the current and future workplace. It identified five broad categories of competencies that would lead to successful transition from school to work (SCANS 1991): - Resources-Identifies, organizes, plans, and allocates resources - Interpersonal-Works with others on teams, teaches others, serves clients, exercises leadership, negotiates, and works with diversity - Information-Acquires, organizes, interprets, evaluates, and communicates information - Systems-Understands complex interrelationships and can distinguish trends, predict impacts, as well as monitor and correct performance - Technology-Works with a variety of technologies and can choose appropriate tool for task The SCANS report recommended that these competencies be learned in context in the environment in which they will be applied. Thus, the need for collaboration between schools and employers became apparent, as did the need for educational reform. Guided by these factors, vocational-technical programs have been redesigned and efforts such as tech prep have been initiated to respond to the SCANS challenge. State and Local Efforts Since 1991, many educational efforts have been initiated to incorporate the SCANS skills in the vocational-technical curricula of both secondary and postsecondary institutions. The Division of Vocational Education in the Idaho Department of Education, for example, developed a curriculum framework for the state's vocational-technical programs to address the training needs of employers and students. This framework, developed by industry and education personnel, encompassed the goals outlined in the SCANS report (Idaho Department of Education 1994). Tech prep programs in many states have been developed around the SCANS competencies. The Texas Education Agency and the University of Texas at Austin developed a model that incorporates tech prep components and SCANS competencies into their health science technology education program (McCarty et al. 1994). As part of their tech prep project, 91 Indiana secondary and postsecondary educators developed 50 application-based lessons during the 1993-1994 school year. Modeled around the SCANS competencies, these lessons are designed to bridge the gap students encounter when moving from school to work, focusing on long- and short-term project topics such as "creating a videotape" (Indiana Region 10 Tech Prep Consortium 1994). Most tech prep efforts incorporate recommendations presented in the SCANS report. For example, tech prep in Ohio is characterized by six benchmarks that focus on SCANS competencies (Ohio Department of Education 1993): - Tech prep programs will demonstrate systemic change at both the secondary and