The Transition Year program is an optional, one-year, standalone, full-time program offered in 80% of second-level schools in the Republic of Ireland. The purpose of this study was to analyze the features of the Transition Year program in the Republic...
The Transition Year program is an optional, one-year, standalone, full-time program offered in 80% of second-level schools in the Republic of Ireland. The purpose of this study was to analyze the features of the Transition Year program in the Republic of Ireland and to explore its transformative aspects, with special reference to Mezirow’s ‘Transformative Learning Theory’, and its educational implications for application to the Korean context.
The study especially focused on three topics: First, this study explored the program’s mission and overall aims, program coordination contents of its curriculum, teaching-learning methods and approaches, methods of assessment and evaluation, how is it brought into operation and its educational effects. Second, this study examined the transformative implications of the learning experiences for students taking part in the Transition Year program. Third, this study analyzed the implications Transition Year Program has in terms of knowledge education, character education, and career education. This study was mainly based on a literature review and research from various kinds of sources, including web sources. The results of this study can be summarized as follows:
First, to promote the personal, social, educational and vocational development of pupils, each school was empowered with discretionary authority and, under the lead of the Transition Year Core Team, can plan and implement the program by involving parents, work providers and the wider community as educational partners, in order to ensure the program’s efficient and effective delivery. The curriculum content consists of Core Subject, Subject Sampling, Transition Year Specific Modules, and Transition Year Calendar (known as ‘Once Off’). The main feature of the Transition Year program is summarized by the expression ‘learning beyond the classroom’. Teaching-learning methods and approaches centered around activity-based learning, group work, project work, and field trips. In assessment and evaluation, all reflections, opinions, and reports of pupils, parents, and teachers are taken into account. Through the Transition Year program pupils acquire positive development and undergo transformative experiences that influence their maturity, enable them to explore career opportunities, allow them to improve relationships with others, social skills and competency, and enhance responsibility and attitude towards their own learning: all these elements and factors were absent or insufficient in the pupil before they took part in the program.
Second, the Transition Year program allowed the pupils to refresh and change their individual perspectives on career, college, relationships, school life etc. At the same time, pupils underwent an emancipatory transformative learning experience by which their real life perspectives were transformed through self-reflection, critical examination of things taken-for-granted, and reformulation of meaning structure: this experience can be understood as personal maturity. This might be defined as a great non-continuous leap in the pupil’s process of maturity.
Third, the learning identity of the pupil was developed in a reciprocal understanding process based on a two-way conversational pattern between the teacher and the pupil that allowed the two parts to better understand each other. Moreover, during the Transition Year the teacher and the pupil created a dialogical, horizontal “I-You” educational relationship grounded in an atmosphere of reciprocal trust and ease aiming at encouraging character education. It must also be noted that pupils participating in the Transition Year program explored the meaning of life, not only a career choice, thus acquiring a large variety of experiences and undergoing a process of self-reflection.
In the course of implementing programs similar to Transition Year program, the Korean Ministry of Education should take into account four principal suggestions. First, Transition Year program should be understood as aiming at the holistic and personal development of the pupils rather than being seen as a mere form of career or vocational education. Second, long term briefing sessions should be implemented in order to allow school principals, teachers, pupils, and parents to fully understand (and be persuaded of) the program and its expected educational effects. I would especially like to suggest that it should be the students, and not the school or the Ministry of Education, to decide whether he or she should participate in the program or not. Third, since ‘experiential activity’ is one of the most important parts in Transition Year program, budget planning for it should be also carefully considered. Fourth, introduction of the program into the Korean education context will require patience and tenacity to realize the missions and aims of program during the time required to fully develop this form of schooling.