The development of the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (ABCD)

A draft Australian Blueprint for Career Development (ABCD) has been developed as a comprehensive resource designed to integrate and strengthen career development and education across Australia for all people throughout their lives. For details see Miles Morgan Australia You are now leaving the DEST website

The highly successful Canadian Blueprint for Life/ Work Designs was the model for the ABCD which has been reworked with the input of career educators, counsellors, practitioners and others to meet the demands of the Australian learning and work environment.

The primary aim of the development of the ABCD for the Australian context is to provide a national framework of competencies that create integrated, effective and measurable career development programmes to help Australians to better manage their lives, learning and work. It has two main focuses:

Detailed career competencies that all Australians need to acquire in order to build their careers.
Processes for planning, implementing and evaluating career programmes and resources.

It provides a framework within which existing initiatives can be mapped and future initiatives coordinated. Importantly, it also offers the flexibility that is required in the Australian setting because while career competencies and performance indicators are precisely defined, standards are determined locally.

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Why is the Blueprint useful?

Career competencies

Why is the Blueprint useful?

Firstly, it provides a consistent means of monitoring the career development of people across all of the transitions they may make in their lives and work, in a variety of agencies. This is because the career competencies within the Blueprint are competencies that reflect lifelong learning.

Secondly, service provision can be delivered more consistently by providing users with a common language and framework for assisting clients in developing career competencies. This will help service providers and policy makers to reduce redundancies, gaps and duplications with and across systems, and to facilitate comparisons between interventions.

Thirdly, it provides an efficient means for reviewing, comparing and selecting programs, which saves time and energy. Users can also specify the outcomes of their programs in a way that is recognisable by clients, other service providers, and by those who are responsible for mapping and reporting on program outcomes and service provision, in a way that is appropriate to local settings and needs.

The Blueprint provides a mechanism by which both career practitioners and clients can articulate issues relating to career development. Having a clear framework to draw upon helps to realise awareness of such issues, and gives people a common means with which to think about and act upon these issues across a broad array of settings.

Finally, the Blueprint enables career development across the lifespan.

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Career competencies

Comprehensive charts introduce 11 career competencies, each with a set of performance indicators grouped into three interconnected key areas – personal management, learning and work exploration, and career building. There are four developmental phases ensuring that the career competencies are relevant across a whole lifespan.

The ABCD pays attention to the broad range of skills, attitudes and experiences that contribute to a fulfilled life of learning and working as well as the more traditional career and employment focus of career development.

Example

Competency 5.3 ‘Locate, interpret, evaluate and use career information' at performance indicator 5:3:1, which is ‘Explore the educational and training requirements of various work roles'. You'll note that the local standard given below reflects all three criteria specified by the Blueprint – that is, what individuals are required to do, under what conditions, and to what standard – in order to demonstrate competence:

‘ Grade nine students will correctly describe the educational or training requirements for five work roles assigned to them .'

So we know that the exercise takes place in the school setting (Year nine) and that they will have their work roles assigned to them (conditions), and they must describe the educational or training requirements for five work roles (what they are required to do) and that they must do so correctly.

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