Each Career Pathway Unit is carefully
designed to address multiple competencies while engaging students in
exciting hands-on activities. These projects facilitate learning
through real-world applications of academic standards. Learning
retention is increased and a level of proficiency is achieved that
would never be possible in a standard classroom setting.
When designing a plan to integrate
career clusters into your curriculum, it is important to
consider all skill sets that are necessary for success in today’s
working world. Everyone can agree that basic academic skills such as
reading, writing, and math are necessary. Standards for these
content areas are typically defined by state or local school
officials, but one can obtain standardized national sets of
standards from various organizations or government agencies.
Another key benefit to the design and
application of a CPU is that students become familiar with and
practice critical employability “soft skills” such as those
identified by the SCANS report. The SCANS foundation skills
and competencies are based on a US Department of Labor study which
identified a number of workplace skills critical to career success
in the 21st century work place. These include a foundation of basic
academic skills such as those mentioned above, but also soft skills
such as problem solving, information gathering and organization,
teamwork, resource allocation, working with people of diverse
cultures, and more.
Although the study was conducted over 15 years ago, the resulting
report has been endorsed by every Secretary of Labor under every
presidential administration since that time.
The chart below provides a quick
cross-reference correlation of individual CPUs to language arts,
science, math, technology, and critical workplace skills and
competencies.
Details can be found about the responsible
organizations and their related standards set via these websites:
