SCAN Skills At-A-Glance

SCANS: Three-part Foundation

Basic Skills

• Reading: locates, understands and interprets written information in prose and in documents such as manuals, graphs, and schedules.

• Writing: communicates thoughts, ideas, information, and messages in writing; and creates documents such as letters, directions, manuals, reports, graphs, and flow charts.

• Arithmetic/Mathematics: performs basic computations and approaches practical problems by choosing appropriately from a variety of mathematical techniques.

• Listening: receives, attends to, interprets, and responds to verbal messages and other cues.

• Speaking:  organizes ideas and communicates orally.
   

Thinking Skills

• Creative Thinking: generates new ideas.
  Decision-Making: specifies goals and constraints, generates alternatives, considers risks, and evaluates and chooses best alternative.

• Seeing things in the mind’s eye: organizes and processes symbols, pictures, graphs, objects, and other information.
   

• Knowing how to learn : uses efficient learning techniques to acquire and apply new knowledge and skills.
   

• Reasoning: discovers a rule or principle underlying the relationship between two or more objects and applies it when solving a problem.
   

Personal Qualities

• Responsibility:  exerts a high level of effort and perseveres towards goal attainment.
   

• Self-esteem: believes in own self-worth and maintains a positive view of self.

• Sociability: demonstrates understanding, friendliness, adaptability, empathy, and politeness in group settings.

• Self-management: assesses self accurately, sets personal goals, monitors progress, and exhibits self-control.
   

• Integrity and Honesty: chooses ethical courses of action.
   

SCANS: Five Competencies

Resources

• Time:  selects goal-relevant activities, ranks them, allocates time, and prepares and follows schedules.
   

• Money: uses or prepares budgets, makes forecasts, keeps records, and makes adjustments to meet objectives.
   

• Material & Faculties: acquires stores, allocates, and uses materials or space efficiently.
   

• Human Resources: assesses skills and distributes work accordingly, evaluates performances and provides feedback.
   

Interpersonal

• Participates as a member of a team: contributes to group effort.
   

• Teaches others new skills
   

• Serves clients/customers: works to satisfy customers’ expectations.
   

• Exercises leadership: communicates ideas to justify position, persuades and convinces others, responsibly challenges existing procedures and policies.
   

• Negotiates:  works towards agreements involving exchange of resources resolves divergent interests.
   

• Works with diversity: works well with men and women from diverse background.
   

Information

• Acquires and evaluates information
   

• Organizes and maintains information
   

• Interprets and communicates information
   

• Uses Computers to process information
   

Systems

• Understands systems: knows how social, organizational, and technological systems work and operates effectively with them.
   

• Monitors and corrects performance: distinguishes trends, predicts impacts on system operations, diagnoses deviations in systems’ performance and corrects malfunctions.
   

• Improves or designs systems: suggests modifications to existing systems and develops new or alternative systems to improve performance.
   

Technology

• Selects technology: chooses procedures, tools, or equipment including computers and related to technology.
   

• Applies technology to task: understands overall intent and proper procedures for set-up and operation of equipment.
   

• Maintains and troubleshoots equipment: prevents, identifies, or solves problems with equipment, including computers and other technologies.