Box B.4 - The SCANS Framework and FITness

A particularly important viewpoint is presented in the SCANS report produced in 1992 by the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills to promote the development of a skilled workforce. ¹ In addition to being the driver for a number of efforts (ranging from programs for literacy to standards for the retail industry and the information technology industry), the SCANS report described competencies that provided an important point of departure for the approach to FITness described in Chapter 2 of this report . The SCANS workplace competencies include the following:

1. Planning and resource allocation (budgets, schedules, space, and staff);
2. Information (acquire, evaluate, interpret, organize, communicate);
3. Interpersonal skills (work in teams, negotiate, teach, lead, serve customers, work with diversity);
4. Technology (select, use, and troubleshoot);
5. Systems (understand, monitor, and design).

The intellectual framework laid out in this report and the SCANS report have much in common. In particular, the SCANS competencies are expressed in the context of sustained collaborative project activity, using technology. The correspondence between the FITness capabilities and the SCANS competencies is shown in Table B.1 below.

Notes

¹ Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. 1992. Learning a Living: A Blueprint for High Performance, Department of Labor, Washington, D.C.