Abstract:
This study was conducted with the purpose of assessing the practices and challenges of change
management in secondary schools. The study was carried out in 9 (32%) secondary schools of
study area which was selected by using simple random sampling especially lottery method. A
total of 124 individuals (110 teachers and 14 school principals) were participated in the
study.110 Teacher participants were selected proportionally and 9 school principals and 5 vice
principals were selected purposively because of availability. The main instrument of data
collection was questionnaire. Interview and document analysis were used in addition to the data
collected by questionnaires. The data collected by questionnaires were analyzed by using
frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. And also the data obtained by interview
from school principals and vice principals were analyzed qualitatively. From the data collected
and analyzed by questionnaires and interviews the emphasis given to preplanning process and
to develop implementation plan was low, there was less involvement of teachers and other stake
holders in developing implementation plan of change. In addition the result of the study revealed
that, schools were not allocated necessary resources to implement the introduced change, low
attention were given to communication aspect of change, there is lack of giving training on theidentified weaknesses and also school principals show low performance in providing continuous
and timely feedback during implementation of change. Change implementation process faced
challenges because of the reasons such as: fear of the unknown, loss of freedom, knowledge or
skill gap and past habit experience. On the other hand the study recommends creating awareness
and empowering the implementers of change in skills and knowledge, planning necessary
resources for change, communicating changes has to accompanied in feedback, schools has to
identify area of weakness and strength in the implementation process of changes, and involving
teachers in planning process of change, making open and regular discussion and rewarding
those teachers who best implement the changes.