Why Coordinate Academic and Industry Skill Standards?

The paper presents four broad arguments for better coordination between academic and technical skill standards. First, educators, policymakers, and employers have emphasized the value of creating stronger connections between academic and vocational education for several years. Integrated skills are needed in new, more demanding workplaces and provide better pedagogic and social opportunities for all students and educators. Second, research has increasingly shown that relating learning to work can strengthen academic learning by giving a coherence to academic studies that is difficult to create when subjects are taught independently or in the abstract. Third, given that the workplace now demands better academic skills across all occupations, increasing the rigor of academic preparation for all students is especially important. Fourth, by working together, academic and vocational educators and employers can strengthen both sets of standards. At the same time that educators often do not possess a strong understanding of the workplace, employers and workers are not in the best position to evaluate the academic content of the skills they need. A strong working relationship between educators and employers in developing skill standards eliminates potentially misleading messages delivered through standards. complete document

In North Clackamas High School in Oregon, a physics teacher used the state’s scoring guide for lab reports to compare students’ traditional lab reports with ones they did for Web pages. He found that most students scored considerably higher when they wrote the reports for their Web pages. He attributed this fact to students’ personal investment in writing the reports and to their desire to make the Web pages as understandable as possible for an outside audience. The data showed several improvements:

• Students wrote clearer research questions and better-reasoned hypotheses.
• The Web page reports were more detailed and provided a better sense of the subtleties and difficulties of creating a truly scientific experiment to test a research question.
• Students achieved at a higher level.
• Students generally found more meaning in their work and were more careful to use appropriate scientific vocabulary and concepts.

Similarly, the cross-cutting functional skills or “Competencies” identified by the SCANS Commission as being those necessary for workplace success are all skills learned better “by doing” than “by reading”: finding and managing resources, working with others, using and communicating information, understanding complex systems, and working with technology. Compelling projects and work-based learning experiences provide the content that motivates students to exercise these functions. Conversely, as students improve their skills levels in research, interpersonal, resource management, communication and technological skills, the quality of their products improves.

Finally, in the domain of self-knowledge and career development (life-long learning), authentic, integrated learning experiences offer students important opportunities to explore the core questions of adolescence: “Who am I?” and “Where am I going?”. Without the context of meaningful, valued, productive activity, they seek elsewhere for the stuff from which to craft an identity and vision for their lives, and may end up defining themselves and their goals in more constricted—or worse, in destructive—ways.

Ensuring that students challenge themselves to think seriously about these issues and meet the career development standards will enhance learning in the other domains as well. For example, a student who has thought carefully about her experience on a biology project may realize that the satisfaction came from the opportunity to conduct in-depth research. She may discover that she was particularly adept as observing details and managing data – “transferable” functional skills that could be applied in many professions. She may then select the health and bioscience academy in the 10th grade and perhaps take extra classes in chemistry and physics. She may further realize that the public presentations were difficult for her and seek out support and guidance from a school counselor or community mentor to gain more skill and confidence in this area. Her interest in biology, coupled with an understanding of the functional skills she will need to succeed, motivate her to seek support where she needs it, and to maintain a healthy self-esteem and eagerness to learn. Further, she will have learned about other options that would allow her to express her talents.

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