The New Junior Cycle: Learning from Innovations in Transition
Published July 2014, ‘Pathways to Innovation and Development in Education - A Collection Of Invited Essays’, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
In a schooling system that is highly centralised and dominated by the effects of a highstakes public examination (the Leaving Certificate), A Framework For Junior Cycle, launched by Minister Ruairí Quinn TD in October 2012, represents a significant and exciting departure from the existing Junior Certificate. The opportunities it offers are documented in the Framework document (DES 2012).
Schools are encouraged to offer a new ‘core’ of 24 statements of learning. This will effectively mean a refocusing on what students need to learn at this stage of their education rather than on what subjects need to be taught. Short courses will form a new curricular component aimed at broadening students’ field of study while at the same time 8 key skills will be embedded in the short course and revised subject specifications. All of this is aimed at making education at this stage more engaging and relevant for the 21st century.
Teachers are asked to use assessment in a much more explicit way to support learning and inform their teaching. There is a place for summative assessment but it ‘should be seen and not heard’ mostly until third year when it plays a part in attracting qualifications. Teachers are asked to take a more significant role in assessing their students for certification with the removal, to a large extent, of external high-stakes assessment - unnecessary in Ireland where the vast majority continue to senior cycle.
The essential guideline for me as an educator is contained in the foreword: “…to place the needs of our students at the core of what we do and to improve the quality of their learning experiences and outcomes” (DES 2012).
There is a certain irony in the parallels between the thinking informing the new Junior Cycle and that which led to the introduction of programmes like the JCSP, the LCVP LCA and TY; for many of the principles that informed those programmes are reappearing in the new JC. We must ask ourselves why this is so and whether or not it is the policy decision that makes an impact on students’ learning experiences. For the purposes of this paper, the focus will be on some parallels between features of the new Junior Cycle and the Transition Year (TY) programme, first introduced in 1974. This, in an attempt to identify lessons for the 69 introduction of the new Junior Cycle which also aims to be more than what Looney describes as “something for teachers, students and schools to overcome, to manage, to conquer” (Looney 2001).
In addition to a particular focus on personal and social development, individual schools were and are given extensive freedom by the TY Guidelines (DE 1993) to design their own curriculum. This was Ireland’s first attempt at top-down/bottom-up reform (Fullan1994). The new JC is similarly taking this capacity-building approach. My experience as a teacher and leader working in three different education systems has shown me that some teachers (like some in all professions) have a love-hate relationship with being asked to participate in curricular reform. They want to have a voice but they can be less enthusiastic when they realise their contribution extends beyond bestowing a blessing (or not) on what is developed for them to engage their students with. It demands of them that they become more deeply involved in designing as well as implementing the sort of learning experiences that will engage their students. Many TY teachers have managed to do this very well and that must surely offer reassurance to teachers who will engage with the new Junior Cycle. Some of the greatest advocates of the new Junior Cycle so far are those very teachers who have found teaching TY classes a great professional liberation!
Any professionals looking for guidance as to what they need to do to meet the Framework challenges need only return to the moral purpose of why they became teachers to find a starting point in what may, initially, seem a daunting task: What is it that students in our school need in terms of learning experiences as they progress from Primary and in preparation for Senior Cycle and beyond? How can I contribute to providing those learning experiences in my classroom? What do I need to do as a professional to improve my capacity to provide the most engaging, relevant and effective education that I can? How can I use assessment as a tool to help students learn and to better inform my teaching? We need no instruction from policy to find answers to these questions; they are embedded in the very core of our beings as educators.
When TY was introduced it brought a fresh emphasis on self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation combined with the use of more active teaching and learning methodologies by teachers (DE 1993). The effects of these features have been largely liberating. Students and teachers report enjoying an improved student-teacher relationship and greater engagement in learning because it is seen as being more relevant to everyday life (Jeffers, 2011). My own experience as a Senior Manager in an International school in Spain taught me that other jurisdictions do have lessons to teach us too. I remember observing a teacher of GCE Media Studies (British curriculum) facilitate students in working with others1 on project-type assignments. The work had rigour and structure but promoted creativity, independent learning and students could see clear links with everyday experiences. This teacher had 70 1 Working with Others is one of the new key skills to be developed in the new Junior Cycle excellent relationships with her students, with the latter reporting that learning was dynamic and topical. The teacher was present to guide and assist, making skill development explicit in the plenary of the lesson, with the students driving themselves in their own learning towards shared learning outcomes. I could see that the teacher’s popularity was in part due to her own communication skills but in large part it was because the students saw the subject as relevant and her as someone who made learning interesting.
Likewise in the new Junior Cycle teachers are asked to develop more explicitly the key skills that are recognised internationally as being important in the 21st century. Rather than teach these as separate components in Junior Cycle programmes, teachers are challenged to embed them in their daily lessons. The fact that these key skills (NCCA 2012) have been developed with identifiable elements and learning outcomes should add rigour and structure to the existing teaching of key skills which can be somewhat ad hoc currently in TY
I once had the privilege of observing a teacher of French in the classroom as part of ongoing evaluation of teaching and learning. She was covering the reading, writing, aural and oral elements of French using an article from a Parisian magazine on the spending habits of French women aged 25 – 32. By assigning groups of students differentiated tasks and by asking them to interrogate graphs within the article, the teacher expertly wove the teaching of content with the key skills of working with others, literacy and numeracy, not to mention those essential language skills. Seeing such skilled teaching in action confirmed for me the importance of a teacher knowing her students, creative preparation that links content knowledge with skill development and, critically, relationships of mutual respect.
From my experience of working with the NCCA’s junior cycle network schools, the option for schools to develop their own short courses in Junior Cycle has been the most warmly welcomed feature of the Framework to date. Again the opportunity exists for a school community to determine which student needs can be met using these curricular components. Teachers are eager to be let loose to develop areas of interest to them which they see as being attractive and relevant to young people and which will allow a certain rejuvenation of their own teaching – something that TY teachers also experience. What’s more, in TY they report that rejuvenation extending to other areas of their teaching and with other age groups (Jeffers, 2011).
The guidelines for TY (DES 1993) sought to bring about greater collegiality in schools, including collaboration with parents and community interests. With the arrival of School SelfEvaluation, some schools are taking the opportunity to look at teaching and learning in Transition Year; at how it provides for progression from Junior Cycle and how it prepares for senior cycle. They are also exploring learning gaps that need to be filled. One obvious audience to consult with are the students themselves. To date - in common with our Northern Irish colleagues, we have not been grasping such opportunities as well as we could in relation to policy and qualifications reform (Elwood 2012). Elwood calls students the ‘Key Actors’. Yet 71 as her paper points out, we rarely engage with them in deep and meaningful way about the more significant aspects of their education. In their book How to Improve Your School, Ruddock and Flutter (2004) also construct a powerful case for consulting students. It should be noted that the NCCA did include this audience during the consultation phase of the new Junior Cycle and they were extremely enthusiastic and insightful in their responses. (NCCA 2011).
In Junior Cycle there is a real and genuine opportunity to consult with students about which short courses might be offered, the learning that most engages them and how teachers’ feedback could better provide them with more meaningful assistance on what to do to improve. It remains to be seen how well schools take up such opportunities.
Similar to the new Junior Cycle, TY was, and still is, strikingly different from other school programmes. Overall, the aims were ambitious and the challenge to schools to implement it in a manner that was true to the spirit of its aim should not be underestimated. When offered the opportunity to introduce the Transition Year Programme in 1974 only 3 schools out of almost 800 did so! Irish educationalists and Irish society generally were even more wedded to the notion of the reliability and fairness of the LC than in 2012 and the country ‘was not for turning’ – not easily anyway. Many saw anything which was not directly and obviously a preparation for the Leaving Certificate as a mere distraction. Times change however and people’s attitudes along with them. Today TY is offered in 75% of schools and taken by over 50% of the cohort (Jeffers,2010).
Mixed attitudes to TY prevail, however, and there are many factors influencing the myriad of opinions. As for any curricular programme it is the individual school and the individual teachers in it - rather than policy decisions - that make the difference between what are seen as meaningful TY experiences or not.
The new Junior Cycle has the look and feel of previous programmes because they share features that work. The success of the new Junior Cycle will depend no less on the interpretation of its spirit by the school and by individual teachers. As John Hattie (2003) says,
‘Interventions at the structural, home, policy, or school level is like searching for your wallet which you lost in the bushes, under the lamppost because that is where there is light. The answer lies elsewhere – it lies in the person who gently closes the classroom door and performs the teaching act –the person who puts into place the end effects of so many policies, who interprets these policies, and who is alone with students during their 15,000 hours of schooling’.
REFERENCES
Department of Education (1993) Transition Year Programme: Guidelines for Schools, Dublin: DES (2012) A Framework for Junior Cycle. http://www.juniorcycle.ie/Curriculum/Framework-forJunior-Cycle.aspx Elwood, J. (2012) Qualifications, examinations and assessment: views and perspectives of students in the 14–19 phase on policy and practice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 42:4, 497-512 Fullan, M. (1994) Coordinating Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategies for Educational Reform. http:// www.michaelfullan.com/media/13396035630.pdf Hattie, J. (2003) Teachers Make a Difference: What is the research evidence? Australian Council for Educational Research Jeffers, G (2010) The role of school leadership in the implementation of the Transition Year Programme in Ireland, School Leadership & Management, Vol 30, No 5: 469 — 486 Jeffers, G (2011) The Transition Year programme in Ireland: Embracing and resisting a curriculum innovation, Curriculum Journal, Vol 22, No 1: 61 — 76 Looney, A. (2001) Curriculum as policy: Some implications of contemporary policy studies for the analysis of curriculum policy, with particular reference to post-primary curriculum in the Republic of Ireland. The Curriculum Journal 12, no. 2: 149–62. NCCA (2012) Key Skills for Junior Cycle http://www.juniorcycle.ie/Planning/Key-Skills.aspx NCCA (2011) Junior Cycle Developments - Innovation and Identity: Summary of Consultation Findings http://www.juniorcycle.ie/NCCA_JuniorCycle/media/NCCA/Curriculum/ Research/Report-on-consultation_for-web-site-Apr-13.pdf Ruddock, J. and Flutter, J (2004) How to Improve Your School: Giving Pupils A Voice. Continuum