The Blueprint for Life/Work Design, commonly referred to as the Blueprint, outlines the skills, knowledge and attitudes that are necessary to effectively manage life/work development (see Appendix A).  It describes career development competencies from early childhood through adulthood that have been divided into four developmental levels, and provides a process for developing and redesigning programs and products that can be used to help Canadians achieve those competencies. The Blueprint was developed through the collaboration of representatives of Canadian provinces and territories and is published by the National Life/Work Centre, a not-for-profit organization that supports career development.

The cornerstone of the Blueprint is the matrix of eleven competencies. The competencies are grouped into three sections: personal management, learning and work exploration, and life/work building. Each of the eleven competencies has been further defined for four developmental levels roughly corresponding to elementary level, middle level, secondary level, and adult level. Within each level of a competency are a number of general learning objectives categorized within a taxonomy of learning as: acquisition, application, personalization, or actualization.

In 2001, the Curriculum and Instruction Advisory Committee adopted the Blueprint as a scope and sequence for the integration of career development competencies into Core Curriculum. All Core Curriculum guides will be correlated to the Blueprint. As teachers become more aware of the framework and the competencies, they will be able to make appropriate connections between the curriculum content, instructional strategies and the Blueprint competencies, and will be able to design activities with the competencies in mind.