The National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) is the foundation for career research, research development, Holland Code career self assessment tests and tools . The NCDG Guidelines is a career knowledge, skills, and decision-making framework. The NCDG Web site provides career development activities and resources linked to the NCDG goals..
Development of the Framework
In 1989, the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC) first released the National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG). The NCDG included a framework of career development competencies, mastery indicators, and career development programs,career research, and research development strategies. In 2003, the US Department of Education’s Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) commissioned the Guidelines Revision Project to update and revise the NCDG framework.
The National Career Development Guidelines now contains the following components:
A framework of career development domains, goals and indicators
Career development activities and resources
Career development lessons, activities, resources,career research, research development, and implementation strategies to support program development, delivery and evaluation
The goal of the National Career Development Guidelines is to help youth and adults better manage their own careers or to help professionals design and deliver career development,career research, and research development programs and services for youth and adults in many settings.
Organization of the Framework
The framework has three domains, goals, and indicators of mastery under each goal.
Domains and Goals
The three domains are:
Personal Social Development (PS)
Educational Achievement and Lifelong Learning (ED)
Career Management (CM)
Under each domain are eleven goals (in total). The goals define career development competencies.
Indicators and Learning Stages
Under each goal, indicators of mastery highlight the knowledge and skills needed to achieve the goal. Using the Bloom’s Taxonomy, each indicator has three learning stages:
Knowledge acquisition
Application and
Reflection
The stages describe learning competency.
Knowledge Acquisition (K). Youth and adults at the knowledge acquisition stage expand knowledge awareness and build comprehension. They can recall, recognize, describe, identify, clarify, discuss, explain, summarize, query, investigate and compile new information about the knowledge.
Application (A). Youth and adults at the application stage apply acquired knowledge to situations and to self. They seek out ways to use the knowledge. For example, they can demonstrate, employ, perform, illustrate and solve problems related to the knowledge.
Reflection (R). Youth and adults at the reflection stage analyze, synthesize, judge, assess and evaluate knowledge in accord with their own goals, values and beliefs. They decide whether or not to integrate the acquired knowledge into their ongoing response to situations and adjust their behavior accordingly.
Coding of the Framework
The NCDG framework Coding System identifies domains, goals, indicators and learning stages.
For example, the second indicator under the first goal of the Personal Social Development domain:
PS1.K2 Identify your abilities, strengths, skills, and talents.
PS1.A2 Demonstrate use of your abilities, strengths, skills, and talents.
PS1.R2 Assess the impact of your abilities, strengths, skills, and talents on your career development.
Using the NCDG Framework
The NCDG framework is the foundation for all of the career resource materials. The National Development Guidelines web site has the following National Career Development Resources -
