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Appendix A: Examples of Themes

Note: This appendix contains representative examples to assist in designing a thematic curriculum. They are not intended to be exhaustive source lists. Examples may have been revised, updated, or otherwise changed since this document was published.

A.1 - Connecticut

A.2 - Dictionary of Occupational Titles

A.3 - Gnaedinger Taxonomy

A.4 - Indiana

A.5 - Sweden

A.6 - Wisconsin

A.1 Connecticut

To address the career exploration and school-based experience components in Connecticut's curriculum, skill committees led by industry experts established career clusters and industry skill standards specific for each cluster. These standards direct local and state curriculum development and applied work-based learning at the secondary level.

Source
CBIA Education Foundation. (1997). Career cluster booklets. Hartford, CT: Author.

A.2 Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT)

The DOT is a useful source of information about industries and fields. In the DOT, occupations are grouped according to nine broad categories:

  1. Professional, Technical, and Managerial Occupations
    Included in this category are occupations concerned with theoretical or applied aspects of such fields as arts; sciences; engineering; education; medicine; law; business relations; and administrative, managerial, and technical work. Most of these occupations require substantial educational preparation (usually at the college or technical institute level). Examples include architectural occupations and electrical engineering occupations.
  2. Clerical and Sales Occupations
    Clerical occupations are concerned with compiling, recording, communicating, computing, and otherwise systematizing data. Clerical occupations associated with the manufacturing process are excluded. Examples include legal secretary, clerk typist, and caption writer. Sales occupations include occupations concerned with influencing customers' favor of a commodity or service. These occupations are closely identified with sales transactions even though they do not involve actual participation.
  3. Service Occupations
    This category includes occupations concerned with performing tasks in and around private households; serving individuals in institutions and commercial and other establishments; and protecting the public against crime, fire, accidents, and acts of war. Examples include caretaker, waiter/waitress, and firefighter.
  4. Agricultural, Fishery, Forestry, and Related Occupations
    These occupations focus on propagating, growing, caring for, and gathering plant and animal life products. Also included are occupations focusing on related support services; logging timber tracts; catching, hunting, and trapping animal life; and caring for parks, gardens, and grounds. Excluded are occupations requiring a primary knowledge or involvement with technologies such as processing, packaging, and stock checking. Examples include farmworker, vine pruner, and park ranger.
  5. Processing Occupations
    This category of occupations is concerned with refining, mixing, compounding, chemically treating, and heat treating work materials and products. Knowledge of a process and adherence to a formula or to other specifications are required to some degree. Vats, stills, ovens, furnaces, mixing machines, crushers, grinders, and related equipment or machines are usually involved. Examples include plating inspector, cylinder grinder, and electro-plating laborer.
  6. Machine Trade Occupations
    Occupations in this category focus on the operation of machines that cut, bore, mill, abrade, print, and similarly work such materials as metal, paper, wood, plastics, and stone. Complicated jobs require an understanding of machine functions, blueprint reading, mathematical computations, and exercising judgment to conform to specifications. Eye-hand coordination may be the most significant factor in less complicated jobs. Installation, assembly, repair, and maintenance of machines and mechanical equipment, and weaving, knitting, spinning, and similarly working textiles are included. Examples include machinist and mechanic.
  7. Benchwork Occupations
    These occupations are concerned with the use of body members, hand tools, and bench machines to fit, grind, carve, mold, paint, sew, assemble, inspect, repair, and similarly work relatively small objects and materials. The work is usually performed at a set position in a mill, plant, or shop, at a bench, worktable, or conveyor. At the more complex levels, workers frequently read blueprints, follow patterns, use a variety of handtools, and assume responsibility for meeting standards. Workers at less complex levels are required to follow standardized procedures. Examples include silversmith, jeweler, and solderer.
  8. Structural Work Occupations
    Structural work occupations are concerned with fabricating, erecting, installing, paving, painting, repairing, and similarly working structures or structural parts such as bridges, buildings, roads, transportation equipment, cables, girders, plates, and frames. The work generally occurs outside a factory or shop environment, except for factory production line occupations concerned with fabricating, installing, erecting, or repairing structures. Handtools or portable power tools, and such materials as wood, metal, concrete, glass, and clay are used. Stationary machines are frequently used in structural work occupations, but they are secondary in importance to handtools and portable power tools. Workers are frequently required to have knowledge of the materials with which they work regarding stresses, strains, durability, and resistance to weather. Examples include riveter, chimney constructor, and machine assembler.
  9. Miscellaneous Occupations
    This category includes occupations concerned with transportation services, packaging and warehousing, utilities, recreation, and motion picture services, mining, graphic arts, and various miscellaneous activities listed above involving extensive recordkeeping. Examples include movie producer, truck supervisor, and graphic artist.

Source
U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration. (1991). Dictionary of occupational titles (4th ed.). Lanham, MD: Bernan.

A.3 Gnaedinger Taxonomy

The Gnaedinger Taxonomy divides the United States economy into 16 industries for purposes of providing career education to high school students. The taxonomy strives to capture all aspects of the legal, paid economy around which the curriculum of an entire school or school-within-a-school could be organized. This industry-based approach to curriculum provides a wide learning context and avoids narrow specialization. The industries are as follows:

* This program is intended for any student interested in some aspect of the building industry--including the building trades, architecture, interior design, planning, housing policy, and construction technology.

Source
Hoachlander, E. G. (1994). Industry-based education: A new approach for school-to-work transition. In Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, School-to-Work: What does the research say about it? (pp. 57-74). Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

A.4 Indiana

Indiana has identified the following fourteen career clusters as a basis for organizing career and occupational information, data collection, and curriculum and instruction:

Source
http://www.dwd.state.in.us/html/teched/clusgrid.html [expired!] or http://icpac.indiana.edu/clusters.html

A.5 Sweden

Recent efforts by The Swedish National Agency for Education to reorganize the upper secondary curriculum around industries and fields resulted in the identification of 16 national programs. Programs identified include the following:

Source
National Agency for Education. (1992). The new upper secondary school. Stockholm, Sweden: Author.

A.6 Wisconsin

In conjunction with area high schools and the University of Wisconsin system, School-to-Work specialists have identified the following career clusters in future job markets. Career Cluster Maps, obtained from high school counselors, guide students in planning a year-by-year academic program related to a chosen job cluster. Maps indicate high school credit requirements of the state and MATC degree and diploma requirements.

Source
http://www.math.unl.edu/~nmsi/tQ2/careerquest.html

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