Endings First: Leading Twenty-Two Faculty From a Body-Systems Curriculum to a Concept-Based Hybrid Using Bridges's Transition Model, With a Two-Year Timeline and an Evaluation of the Revision
Student Name
American College of Education
NUR6043: Fostering Clinical Judgment Through Curriculum and Evaluation
Module 6 Assignment
Instructor Name
October 14, 2030
Why a Transition Model
The curriculum revision proposed in this course is substantial: medical-surgical content reorganized into concepts with exemplars, a clinical judgment thread built on Tanner's model, cultural competence and professional values threads, and competency-based assessment with a portfolio. It affects all 22 full-time faculty, and it asks many of them to give up something. The cardiovascular specialist who has taught the cardiac unit for twelve years will teach perfusion alongside a colleague from renal nursing. Several faculty will see topics they consider essential become untaught conditions that students must reason about.
Most change models focus on the steps an organization takes. Bridges and Bridges (2016) separate the change itself, something that happens around people, from the transition, the slower inner work by which each person comes to terms with it, and they argue that leaders who manage only the change see it fail. The transition runs through three phases. First comes an ending, when people must release the old arrangement and the identity it gave them. Then comes a neutral zone, an uneasy stretch in which the old way is gone and the new one does not yet work. Last comes a new beginning, when people settle into the new identity and the new way of working. I chose this model because the main risk to our revision is not procedural. It is that faculty who feel their expertise is being dismissed will teach the new curriculum in the old way, and the change will exist only on paper. A curriculum map can be redrawn in a semester; a faculty member's sense of what they are for takes longer.
What Educators Who Made This Change Report
Research with educators who implemented concept-based curricula supports this focus. In a phenomenological study of 18 nurse educators implementing a concept-based curriculum, the themes were challenges in implementation, institutional support, and practical integration and adaptation; educators described insufficient training, transition difficulties and resistance to change, but strong leadership and collaboration eased the transition, and resistance diminished over time as educators saw improved critical thinking and clinical judgment in students (Yasin et al., 2025). Keeping such a curriculum alive after launch, Solheim et al. (2022) caution, is its own project, one that depends on faculty using the model well, on continued stakeholder involvement and on leadership. Both sources point to the same conclusion: training, support and visible results carry faculty through the change, and sustaining it requires continued attention after launch.
The Ending
Bridges and Bridges (2016) advise leaders to identify who is losing what, to acknowledge losses openly and to mark the ending. The committee will begin by asking each faculty member, in an individual conversation, what they value in their current course and what they fear losing. From the first round of conversations, three losses stand out: expertise in a specialty that the concepts appear to dilute, content they believe is essential, and the autonomy of owning a course. The plan responds to each. Specialists will lead the concepts closest to their expertise, so that the cardiac specialist leads perfusion. Faculty will propose exemplars and argue for them, so that choices about content are theirs. And each concept will have a lead and a co-teacher rather than a single owner, which is a real loss of autonomy that the committee will acknowledge rather than deny. The ending will be marked with a faculty retreat in which each course's strongest teaching materials are presented and assigned a place in the new curriculum, so that faculty see what carries forward.
The Neutral Zone
The neutral zone will be long, because the new curriculum is built one cohort at a time while the old one continues for current students. For about two years, faculty will teach in both. The model describes this period as uncomfortable but also creative, a time when people are open to new ideas if the uncertainty is managed. The plan provides three supports. First, training: each concept team will complete a workshop on teaching with exemplars and case-based assessment before teaching its concept, which responds to the insufficient training educators reported. Second, temporary structures: a weekly one-hour concept team meeting during the first year of each concept, and a shared online site where teams post materials and questions. Third, protected time: each faculty member will have one course release, or equivalent reduced clinical supervision, during the semester in which they build their concept. The committee will also run a short survey of faculty each semester on workload and confidence, so that problems surface early.
When Resistance Is Information
Some faculty will resist the revision, and the plan treats their resistance as information before treating it as a problem. Two kinds of objection are likely. The first is substantive: a faculty member argues that a specific condition, such as diabetic ketoacidosis, is too dangerous to leave to transfer from an exemplar. Objections of this kind will be tested against the exemplar criteria, frequency, teaching value and risk if missed, and some will succeed; an exemplar list that no faculty member could change would be a sign that the process was not real. The second kind is about loss rather than content: a faculty member opposes the change because it ends a course they built and are proud of. Arguing about evidence will not resolve that objection, because it is not about evidence. The response is the one the model recommends for endings: acknowledging the loss, giving the person a meaningful role in what replaces it and making sure their best materials carry forward. In the first round of conversations, two senior faculty expressed strong opposition. One raised a substantive objection about pharmacology, which led to the decision to integrate pharmacology into every concept. The other, after a second conversation, agreed to lead the mobility concept, which draws on her orthopedic expertise.
The New Beginning and the Timeline
New beginnings, in the model, need a clear purpose, a picture of how the new way will look, a plan and a part for everyone. The purpose, better clinical judgment and less content saturation, will be stated in terms of students' reflections and assessment data from the pilot concept. The picture will come from the first concept: perfusion will be taught in the fall of year one as a pilot, and its transfer case results will be shared with all faculty. The plan is the timeline. Year one, spring: faculty conversations, the retreat and exemplar selection. Year one, fall: the perfusion pilot and training for the next concept teams. Year two: the first full cohort enters the new curriculum, with semester one and two concepts taught. Year three: semesters three and four follow. Each faculty member has a named role, as a concept lead, co-teacher or thread steward.
Evaluating the Revision
The revision will be evaluated as a process and as an outcome. Process: the proportion of faculty reporting confidence in teaching their concept each semester, faculty turnover during the revision compared with the previous three years, and whether each concept's materials are completed on schedule. Outcome: clinical judgment rubric ratings against semester targets, performance on transfer cases, first-time licensure pass rates for the first two cohorts compared with the three cohorts before, and students' reflections on the curriculum. Because licensure results lag by several years and cohorts differ, the committee will not judge the revision by one year's pass rate. The evaluation will be reported to faculty each semester, since the model's final lesson is that a new beginning becomes permanent only when people see that it works.
References
Bridges, W., & Bridges, S. (2016). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (4th ed.). Da Capo Lifelong Books.
Solheim, K., Mittelstadt, K., Muehrer, R., Pinekenstein, B., & Willis, D. (2022). Sustaining a concept-based curriculum: Beyond the launch. Nurse Educator, 47(1), 31-36. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000001016
Yasin, Y. M., Al-Hamad, A., Safi, I., & Salman, A. (2025). Nurse educators' experience in implementing concept-based curriculum: A phenomenology study. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 22(1), Article 20240074. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijnes-2024-0074
How this NUR 6043 Module 6 example is structured
NUR 6043 Module 6 frequently ends by planning a revision of an existing curriculum, led with a named change theory; your classroom's instructions decide the theory. This example justifies its choice of theory, applies each phase with concrete actions, grounds the plan in evidence from educators who made similar changes, sets a realistic timeline and plans evaluation of both the process and the outcome.
NUR6043 Module 6 questions, answered
What does NUR6043 Module 6 usually ask for?
NUR6043 Module 6 frequently asks you to plan the revision of an existing curriculum and lead it with a named change theory, including a timeline and evaluation. Your classroom's instructions decide the theory.
Why use a transition model for curriculum change?
Because curriculum revision often asks faculty to give up courses and expertise they value. A transition model focuses on how people let go of the old and adopt the new, which is where many revisions fail.
How should a curriculum revision be evaluated?
Evaluate both the process, such as faculty confidence and timeliness, and the outcomes, such as clinical judgment ratings and licensure results, remembering that some outcomes take years to appear.
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