The Blueprint framework for career management skills: a critical exploration

We’ve just published a new article entitled The ‘Blueprint’ framework for career management skills: a critical exploration. This article examines the how the Blueprint framework for career management skills has developed across implementations in the USA, Canada and Australia. I hope that the article will be particularly useful given the fact that new version of the Blueprint have now been launched in England and Scotland.

The various iterations of the Blueprint sought to create a competency framework that articulates the concept of career management skills for a range of audiences (careers workers, policy-makers, teachers and end users). The Blueprint framework sets out an approach to career development which is underpinned by a learning paradigm. Its advocates reject the idea that career is just about making vocational choices and argue that in flexible and dynamic labour markets individuals need the ability to actively manage their careers. The term ‘career management skills’ is used to describe the skills, attributes, attitudes and knowledge that individuals need in order to do this. The task of careers work is accordingly conceived as fostering learning and personal development. The Blueprint framework thus represents an attempt to describe a set of learning outcomes which can be focused upon at different times during a life journey and to detail a developmental process through which these outcomes can be acquired.

It is argued that despite the lack of an empirical basis for the Blueprint the framework forms a useful and innovative means through which career theory, practice and policy can be connected. The article argues that the framework comprises both core elements (learning areas, learning model and levels) and contextual elements (resources, community of practice, service delivery approach and policy connection) and goes on to explore each of these elements.

Unfortunately the article isn’t available in open access at the moment. I’m investigating ways to open it up but in the meantime feel free to contact me if you would like to talk further about the Blueprint.