Chapter 3 The Current State of the F amily and Consumer Sciences Profession
45
decide? These are questions about sustainability
that will face all families and communities.
FCS professionals in all specializations can
incorporate sustainability into their practices.
Here are some examples.
• A hotel manager institutes a program that
encourages guests to reuse towels, thus
reducing the environmental impact of
laundry.
• A family and consumer sciences educator
teaches students the eight Rs: refuse, reduce,
reuse, recycle, repair, restore, repurpose,
redesign (Thompson, Harden, Clauss, Fox,
& Wild, 2012).
• A fashion buyer responds to consumer
demands by expanding the store’s selection
of organic clothing.
• An interior designer encourages a client to
follow LEED (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) standards for a new
building.
What are some other examples that come to
mind?
Cross-Cutting Theme: Capacity
Building
As far back as the founding pioneers, family
and consumer sciences has been a prescriptive
and educational discipline. That is, it focuses
on teaching and finding solutions to problems
before they happen rather than only on fixing
problems after they occur. Providing education
and offering recommendations empowers peo-
ple to make moral, ethical, and even spiritual
decisions that will improve their quality of life
as they see fit. Empowering people in this way
is an example of capacity building, defined by
Buck (2003) as “developing knowledge and skills
for an individual, a family, or a community to
meet their full potential.” Building capacity in
oneself or others requires critical thinking, good
communication skills, an appreciation for diver-
sity, and the willingness to become engaged in
public policy development.
Whether working with clothing, food, or
shelter or helping people with relationships,
family and consumer sciences specializations
use critical thinking to solve life problems.
Say, for example, that an early childhood edu-
cator is working with a three-year-old who
seems to have problems navigating socially in
the classroom. A trained educator will look at
the problem in several ways and consider the
child’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physi-
cal spheres. Finding information about these
spheres could include interacting with the child’s
family, other teachers, the child, and perhaps, a
medical doctor. Creative thinking skills play a
large part in critical thinking and problem solv-
ing. Family and consumer sciences draws from
a number of core disciplines such as psychol-
ogy, sociology, economics, biology, and chemis-
try to creatively solve everyday problems faced
by individuals. This is why it is called an applied
discipline. Vincenti and Smith (2004) discuss the
role of critical science theory that applies to all
family and consumer sciences specializations
as knowledge that focuses on “human interests,
communicative theory grounded in dialogue,
and actions based on moral consciousness.”
Understanding and utilizing communica-
tion skills is essential in applying concepts and
solving life problems in all family and con-
sumer sciences specializations. For example, if
an interior designer cannot effectively commu-
nicate a creative solution to his or her client, the
idea is lost between conception and potential
implementation. Likewise, if a hospital dieti-
tian cannot communicate a nutritional analysis
to other professionals on his or her diagnostic
team—including physicians, nurses, therapists,
and the patient—the expertise goes to waste.
People hone their communication skills over
time, responding to new methods of sending
and receiving information. Even though com-
munication methods change with technological
innovations, the ability to listen, understand,
and clearly articulate ideas remains at the core
of good communication.
To build capacity of individuals, families,
or communities, family and consumer sciences