The Transition Year: A Case Study in the Implementation of Curriculum Change

Abstract

One of the objectives of current educational policy is to encourage and facilitate as
 many students as possible to continue in full time education after the junior cycle to
 the extent that 90% of sixteen to eighteen year olds will be completing senior cycle
 education by the year 2000.2 Curriculum development is occurring in order to
 facilitate the holistic development of all students progressing to the end of the senior
 cycle. The réintroduction of the Transition Year Programme is part of this curriculum
 development.
 In common with Fullan and Promfret's study of twenty-seven American and British
 implementation studies, this study takes the view that "the implementation process is
 suggested as a more important research focus than the degree of implementation."3
 Three strands are involved in a study of the process of implementing the Transition
 Year Programme in schools - educational change, the process of implementing a new
 programme and the Transition Year Programme itself