[Reading-hall-of-fame] SCANS 30 Years On

[Thomas Sticht]

8/27/2021

 SCANS: 30th  Year Anniversary of Teaching and Learning in Context

 Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult Education (Ret.)

 The year 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the first
official report of the Secretary of Labor’s Commission on Achieving
Necessary Skills ( SCANS), *What Work Requires of Schools. *In this report
SCANS Commissioners reported on their examination of the skills, knowledge,
and behavioral demands of workplaces and found that work in America had
fundamentally changed over the last half century and that our education
system needed to change in order to meet the new needs of workers and
workplaces.

 A major recommendation by SCANS Commissioners stated, “We believe, after
examining the findings of cognitive science, that the most effective way of
learning skills is "in context," placing learning objectives within a real
environment rather than insisting that students first learn in the abstract
what they will be expected to apply” (SCANS, 1991)

 Origins of this Recommendation

 A major stream of activities and reports leading to this SCANS
recommendation was based on work by colleagues and myself in the 1980s and
reported at the U.S. Department of Labor by Barbee (1986) in a report for
the International Labour Office. In this report Barbee makes the point that
 “Literacy skill development facilitates technical skill development and
technical skill development facilitates literacy, each assisting in the
development of the other. Much was learned in this area by the work in
"Functional Context" technical and literacy training and reported by Sticht
(1985) in "Cast-Off Youth". Research findings over many years support the
assumptions upon which the functional context training is based.”

 The next year, in 1987, Arnold Packer, then of the Hudson Institute,
visited me at the Applied Behavioral & Cognitive Sciences, Inc. (the ABC'S)
in San Diego. At that time I briefed him on the work we had been doing on
Functional Context Education (FCE) and gave him some materials about FCE.
Later that year Packer sent a letter to me at the ABCS saying that, "I have
just finished reading your "Functional Context Learning." It makes a great
deal of sense to me and fits all my prejudices."

 Three years later, on February 20, 1990, then Secretary of Labor Elizabeth
Dole formed the SCANS with Arnold Packer serving as Executive Director and
I was invited to be one of the SCANS commissioners. At the first meeting of
the SCANS I made a presentation about Functional Context Education and its
application to preparing youth and adults with the basic skills needed for
work (Kane, Berryman, Goslin, & Meltzer, 1990). The latter report went on
to say “Learning in context provides meaning and therefore motivation to
learn.” This *functional context approach* to instruction was discussed by
Commissioners and subsequently lead to the recommendation to teach skills
“in context” as noted above.

 The Contextualized Teaching and Learning Movement

 As a Google search will reveal, the SCANS report spawned various streams
of Governmental  and Private Foundation funding and a large number of
activities in education to research and  implement contextualized teaching
and learning. Former President of the American  Association of Community
and Junior Colleges and SCANS Commissioner Dale Parnell (2000)  published a
book entitled *Contextual Teaching Works *and noted that,  “On average,
colleges are less than 50 percent successful in correcting serious academic
deficiencies in adult students. We believe that the success rates can be
improved significantly by using “contextual” strategies in teaching.
Contextual teaching presents concepts in contexts that are familiar to
students and that demonstrate the concepts’ usefulness”  He cites research
from Cast-Off Youth (Sticht, et al., 1985/1987) which I presented at the
first meeting of the SCANS to support contextual teaching and learning.

 Five years later I published a report discussing contextualized teaching
and learning and provided numerous examples of work by various groups to
provide insights into contextualized teaching and learning in high schools
and community colleges (Sticht, 2005). This report was cited in a report
from the National Academies of Science (Lesgold & Welch-Ross,  2012)
calling  attention to the fact that “Contextualized instruction is of
particular interest to adult literacy practitioners ...[it] creates
explicit connections between the teaching of reading and writing and
instruction in an academic discipline or content area (e.g., science,
history, financial management, health, parenting, civics and government,
engineering, mechanics).”

 Illustrating the continuing interest in contextualized education as
advanced by the SCANS 30 years ago, Jurmo & Morturde (2020) provide a 60
year, broad brush look at the contextualized approach to adult education.
They say, “Both veteran and novice adult educators interested in
implementing a contextualized approach should take the time to read the
kinds of sources cited in this document.” As I scoured the sources cited by
Jurmo & Mortrude I found that they cited Sticht (1997) which, like my
initial presentation to the SCANS, discusses contextualizing the teaching
of basic skills with job skills training or other content domains, such as
parenting, religious study, health, etc. I noticed that mine was the only
paper cited written by a former SCANS member.

 Now, on the 30th anniversary of the SCANS report on *What Work Requires of
Schools, * study after study and report after report confirms the original
conclusion by the SCANS that “the most effective way of learning skills is
"in context." Reading the Jurmo & Mortrude (2020)  paper on Contextualizing
Adult Education  made me think of what Arnold Packer had written to me in
1987,  "It makes a great deal of sense to me and fits all my prejudices." I
say, “Ditto that!”

 References

 Barbee, D. (1986, October). Methods of Providing Vocational Skills to
Individuals with Low Literacy Levels: The U.S. Experience. Discussion Paper
No. 1. International Labour Office, Geneva (Switzerland). Online at:
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED284958.pdf

 Jurmo, P. & Mortrude, J. (2020). Contextualizing Adult Education: Learning
from six decades of experience and research. Online at:
https://www.proliteracy.org/Portals/0/pdf/Research/Briefs/ProLiteracy-Research-Brief-04_Contextualizing-2020-09.pdf

 Kane, M., Berryman, S., Goslin, D., & Meltzer, A. (1990). The Secretary’s
Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills: Identifying and describing the
skills required by work. United States Department of Labor. Online at:
http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/idsrw/idsrw.pdf.

 Lesgold, A. & and Welch-Ross, M. (Eds). (2012). Improving adult literacy
instruction: Options for practice and research. Washington, DC: The
National Academies Press. Online at: https://doi.org/10.17226/13242.

 Parnell, D. (2000); Contextual teaching works: Helping students reach
higher levels of achievement. Waco, Tx., CORD Communications

 SCANS. (1991). What work requires of schools. Online at:
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED332054

 Sticht, T.G. (December 1997). The theory behind content-based instruction.
Focus on Basics*, *Volume 1, Issue D. Online at:
http://www.ncsall.net/index.php@id=433.html

 Sticht, T.G. (2005). Functional context education: Making learning
relevant in the 21st century: Workshop participant’s notebook. Online at:
http://www.nald.ca/library/research/fce/FCE.pdf

Sticht, T., Armstrong, W., Hickey, D., & Caylor, J. (1985/1987).  Cast-off
youth: Policy and training methods from the military experience. New York:
Praeger Publishers.
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