Bridges’ Model of Transition: Lessons for Managing Changes in Schools

This paper explores how Bridges' (2016) model of transition can be applied to a school's implementation of a change process. Problem background was the COVID-19 pandemic which has brought extraordinary leadership and management challenges in many different fields. One institution affected by this pandemic is a private school (henceforth referred to as School X) whose student population has decreased significantly, with the school management team adopting a dual language in response to help students retain students and academic performance. It highlighted that the top-down implementation of the change process had exacerbated resistance and confusion among teachers as their emotional and psychological needs had been ignored. Using Bridges' work, the paper lays out the three stages within the transition process—ending, neutral zone, and new beginning—and describes the essential emotional elements faced by educators along the way. Within that context, the current results find that the school is stuck in a neutral zone, unable to resolve those issues and successfully transfer over to the new instructional model. Building on this claim, the paper proposes using the Concern-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) as a strategic framework to make sense of and better manage teachers' concerns, taking the lessons learned forward into the change process in the future (Hall & Hord, 2020). This study emphasizes the necessity of being aware of emotional states and engaging stakeholders through educational change processes, offering important lessons for school leaders who navigate such transitions.