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