Generic Skills in Career and Technical Education Career and technical educators use a variety of strategies to teach generic skills The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) has identified the general skills required by most workplaces, therefore providing a basis for programs that prepare students for the world of work. Reform programs such as Tech Prep and High Schools that Work strive to incorporate these "generic" skills as they offer students a rigorous academic background, development of technological literacy skills, and learning experiences situated in the context of real-world environments (Pucel 1999 ). Integrated academic and CTE programs and contextual learning efforts offer similar opportunities to promote the learning of generic skills by connecting them to specific workplaces and social practices. Workplace learning experiences are another way to highlight the development of generic skills by placing students in work situations where these generic skills are used in combination with professional or technical skills. Although the United States has adopted a variety of strategies for teaching generic skills, it is not the only country to do so. Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have launched similar programs to address generic skills development. In Australia, the integrated curriculum that infuses literacy into specific vocational courses has served to illustrate the need for contextualised multiple literacies (Searle et al. 1999). Case Studies to Advance Skills and Employability, a project conducted at the Universities of Northumbria and Newcastle, emphasized the development of employability skills within the academic curriculum (Holmes and Miller 2000). The contextual integration of employability skills into the curriculum has become a recent trend in Canada and the United Kingdom (Overtoom 2000). While there is evidence that generic skills are taught in schools, there is great ambiguity about what they are. Many terms have been used to describe them: key skills, fundamental skills, transferable skills, transferable personal skills and employability skills. The list of skills defined by the term used varies from country to country; however, most lists include communication skills, interpersonal and social skills, organization and planning skills, problem-solving skills, creative thinking, literacy, and technology skills. The Australian core competencies add “cultural understanding” as a generic skill (Werner 1995). Most attempts to more closely define generic skills “have resulted in a plethora of superficially similar but often significantly different lists” (Drummond, Nixon, and Wiltshire 1998, p. 20). Guile (2002) argues that definitions of generic skills are based on the complexity of the relationships they imply, which in turn determines how the skills are taught.