OCTOBER 2005
BLUEPRINT ASSESSMENT TOOLS AND PROCEDURES
So many across Canada have directly and indirectly, helped create the Blueprint for Life/Work Designs and bring it to the forefront of the collective career, employment and skills development consciousness. We are at an important milestone in the evolution of the Blueprint, and need feedback. Attached is the heart of a proposal to HRSDC to develop and test Blueprint assessment tools and procedures.
In traditional vocational guidance, practitioners primarily helped clients explore and choose occupational destinations, plan educational and training pathways and learn job search techniques. While these remain worthy goals, increasingly, career practitioners now also try to help people learn a broader range of (Blueprint) career self-management competencies (knowledge, skills and attitudes) they will need, lifelong, to construct meaningful and fulfilling careers.
As with any learning process, it is critical to find out what learners know (PLAR) at the outset, then provide relevant, needs-based learning experiences. What has long been missing in the career development sector is a common language of desired learning outcomes from career development, and ways of measuring increases in learning mastery. The object of the attached proposal is to develop, collaboratively across Canada, in diverse settings, easy -to-use tools and procedures, based on the outcomes language of the Blueprint, to assess and record people’s level of mastery of the Blueprint competencies before, during and after career development interventions. When complete and validated they will, finally, provide an accepted, effective and common approach to measuring the impacts of career development interventions, in terms of new learning that will better equip clients for success in career building.
We hope you will be excited and inspired when you read the attached proposal. When you have read it, we need to know two things of you:
- How can we strengthen this proposal and make it more applicable for you and your organization?
- Do you and your organization want to be involved in this next , critical phase of operationalizing the Blueprint for Life/Work Designs?
Please feel free to share message and attachment with others to whom you feel it may be of interest, and who may wish to provide feedback.
We hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience.
Australian Blueprint
We are pleased to share the new (draft) Australian Blueprint poster. It’s good to see the inclusion of the logos of the originating Canadian partners. If you have any feedback for the Australian team at the Department of Education and Science in Canberra, please forward it to them at Celeste. CROTEAU@Dest.gov.au We hope you are as proud of this as we at NLWC are!
Future articles
We’d be happy to highlight your organization’s Blueprint experience in future articles. Please forward short (100-250 words, max) articles – with scanned pictures and links, if possible ? to info@lifework.ca, or call toll-free: 1-888-533-5683. Blueprint co-development partners are National Life/Work Centre, Canada Career Information Partnership and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.