The Transition Year (TY)

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Facilitating schools to develop more collaborative cultures is seen as one of the major challenges in promoting teachers' continuing professional development. This paper recounts how a 15 month project designed to promote greater collegial learning and professional development emerged and developed within one school. Evidence is presented that suggests that a model that is voluntary, involves teachers observing each others' classrooms and sharing insights is both effective and sustainable. Trust, supportive school leadership and external facilitation are also identified as important components in the realisation of this model of teacher development.

Work experience placements feature increasingly in mainstream schooling. They ContextWork experience placements feature increasingly in mainstream schooling. They are seen as presenting young people with engaging and relevant learning opportunities. When senior cycle education in Ireland was restructured in the mid-nineties, new programmes made 'orientation to adult and working life' a more explicit goal than had previously been the case. Now, three of the four programmes on offer to 15-18 year olds include work experience as a pivotal component with placements typically lasting one or two weeks on one or more occasions during the school year. Feedback from students to the Transition Year Programme (TYP), the Leaving Certificate Applied (LCA) and the Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme (LCVP) attest to the popularity of these placements.Evaluations of these three programmes also underline the centrality of work experience placements to the relative success of these curricular innovations (Department of In Ireland, the Education Act (1998) requires schools to provide students with 'appropriate guidance to assist them in their educational and career choices' (section 9c).This reflects, to some extent, a tradition that has developed since the late 1960s where schools employed dedicated professional guidance counsellors, frequently people with previous experience as subject teachers, who took particular responsibility for personal, educational and vocational guidance. The most common route for teachers to become formally recognized as school guidance counsellors is to undertake a dedicated course in guidance and counseling. Typically this involves a one-year full time course, combining school placement with classes, lectures and workshops in a university. An initiative within the education of Guidance CounsellorsThe growing importance of work experience in schools has implications for the guidance and counselling function. In some cases guidance counsellors' involvement with the new programmes, particularly work placements, has been extensive and resulted in a shift in priorities and even in role identity 2 . Elsewhere, perhaps due to the pressure of other work -including counseling related to personal, educational and career issues, consultation with parents and referral agencies, psychological assessments -counsellors have been less engaged in the process. Consequently, other teacher colleagues, rather than guidance counsellors, have emerged as work experience co-ordinators.School guidance counsellors' contributions to the development of TYP, LCVP and LCA -the programmes with work experience placements as intrinsic components -can be grouped into three broad categories:1 For a fuller exploration of some of the issues facing employers offering placements see 'Work Experience can be the University of Life' by Gerry Jeffers in Business and Finance, magazine, 6 th November, 2003. 2 It is also worth noting that in some schools teachers other than guidance counsellors have taken responsibility for work...