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

Fri Aug 27 23:28:11 BST 2021

Thank you, Tom.  I really enjoyed reading your piece... and thank you for you many contributions and leadership, learning in context! You inspire so many of us with your contributions and thinking!  And this message about learning in context can't be shared too often!  We have many states that are moving back to skill drills out of context - all in the hope of "catching students up".  What misery that will bring to our students.

Vicki

Professor Emerita, Language, Literacy, Culture
Vanderbilt University
2011-2012 President, International Literacy Association
http://www.readinghalloffame.org/victoria-risko-inducted-2011<https://email.vanderbilt.edu/owa/14.2.318.4/scripts/premium/redir.aspx?C=v1LFb_tu902S-HYcxHZy5Su0bKybKtAIsrsrFI4t64thetD4xnlOYdIU8WermC5CgadveDz_Awg.&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.readinghalloffame.org%2fvictoria-risko-inducted-2011>
Co-author, Professional Learning in Action: An inquiry approach for teachers of literacy. (Risko & Vogt), 2016.  NY:Teachers College Press.

________________________________
From: reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk <reading-hall-of-fame-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk> on behalf of Thomas Sticht <tgsticht at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2021 4:16 PM
To: reading hall of fame <Reading-hall-of-fame at lists.nottingham.ac.uk>
Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] SCANS 30 Years On

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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffiles.eric.ed.gov%2Ffulltext%2FED284958.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916694419%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=82QnruLSTrIGISvm7WEL2W8GU3S3p0IeJo7JF94K%2Byc%3D&reserved=0>

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proliteracy.org%2FPortals%2F0%2Fpdf%2FResearch%2FBriefs%2FProLiteracy-Research-Brief-04_Contextualizing-2020-09.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916704374%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=%2FXwaeeobNlE9HGoYlA%2Br%2BALeCmueul%2B12wZArO98jQw%3D&reserved=0>

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwdr.doleta.gov%2FSCANS%2Fidsrw%2Fidsrw.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916704374%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=WC10U8jkP5JKyYmZ3688iNNJ7PlhXpGVM5An8P79Wlo%3D&reserved=0>.

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.17226%2F13242&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916714331%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=3mXMsWREz%2F57zCbuJYTp2Gzqaakj%2FlgRkCzkCF7Tz3A%3D&reserved=0>.

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Feric.ed.gov%2F%3Fid%3DED332054&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916714331%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=od%2F1evseqZ%2Fcs9fQU1U%2BlPKhed24idvIq9vy3XS72Og%3D&reserved=0>

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncsall.net%2Findex.php%40id%3D433.html&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916714331%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=QfbNxRjg0P9wKvVuTRS1GcDTDQ2jA%2FyVgfl0itotVYI%3D&reserved=0>

 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<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nald.ca%2Flibrary%2Fresearch%2Ffce%2FFCE.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Cvictoria.j.risko%40vanderbilt.edu%7C06a963a08d544e767c0208d9699feda0%7Cba5a7f39e3be4ab3b45067fa80faecad%7C0%7C0%7C637656958916724286%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C2000&sdata=FBxTgMj4SzvjPmfU2nDU57VQa2Xr1Qmb4tMS9aB5Lhg%3D&reserved=0>

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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