Running head: AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

An Analytic and Personal and Professional Update

Portfolio Two
Mubarak Buti
George Mason University
August 20, 2016

Section 2: Analytical Personal and Professional Update

In this section, please address the following questions.
Since Portfolio 1, in what ways have you been engaged in your professional community?
How have you addressed the gaps discussed in Portfolio Evaluation 1?
What have you done and how have the courses informed you?
How have your courses influenced your thinking and work?
What are your intellectual goals now?
What are your professional goals now? Provide evidence of these changes.

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

Engagement in my Professional Community

Looking back at the past 16 months and since I completed portfolio one I observed
changes in my personal and professional goals. As for the personal changes, I think I
developed great relationships with some graduate students, especially with those who are
majoring in education policy and higher education. Spending more time talking to them
about my research interest made me confident enough to explain the problem. I am no
longer hesitant about expressing the issue and I became more willing and accepting to my
colleagues suggestions compared to the past. It has been exceptionally helpful to argue with
other graduate students and to hone my debating skills for the purpose of receiving insights
from different perspectives. Additionally, I have been engaging myself in colloquiums and
poster presentations over the last three semesters to expose myself with other PhD students
and use these professional events as opportunities to present my research interest. I recall
most of my instructors recommending that I should network and attend conferences, but I
never realized its benefit until I attended these educational social events. Since I started to
engage myself in these thoughtful discussions and interacting with students, teachers and
researchers I have noticed that I begun altering my research interest in a positive way.

Addressing primary gaps noted by my committee in Portfolio I

After presenting portfolio I to my committee members, I was advised to address two
areas not only to enhance my research portfolio, but also to help me move forward in my
research interest. Addressing the issue and stating the problem clearly was the primary gap
that I lacked describing well because I was not sure about the topic and the direction I was

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

heading after completing three semesters of my PhD program. However, I feel now more
confident with the issue and the problem because I addressed the second gap of my
portfolio, specifically by using published reports from Bahrain and linking it to my research
interest. I have also addressed the gap of insufficient citation by referring to sources in all
my written assignments as well as in my discussions to present my statements with valid
references.

Using my course work to inform myself:

I have continued to use the course work over the last two semesters to focus on my
research interest effective decision-making for school principals in Bahrain. In my
assignment for the courses EDUC 873: Education Policy: Comparative and International
Perspectives I focused on the material related to reforms and policies to prepare principals as
effective decision-makers. Knowing that I have a great personal experience by working on
the primary educational reforms at the Ministry of Education in Bahrain I took the
advantage to build my knowledge base on efficiency and restructuring the decision-making
process. For this course I spent over 3 moths in analyzing and summarizing the latest
reforms pertinent to the national vision of the Kingdom of Bahrain to understand why
principals have the sense of disempowerment and how they view their role as principals
should be to bridge the existing gap between the knowledge students acquired through
education and skills required by the job market. At the same time, the course EDRS 820
Evaluation Methods for Educational Program and Curricula informed my understanding on
the sense of disempowerment after I examined the Performance Management System
(PMS). I discovered in this course that it is essential to improve the principals efficiency by

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

using the Culturally Responsive Evaluation(CRE) theory. While researching through
literature on evaluating PMS and its impact on principals efficiency in decision-making, I
found that I need to support my research with strong theories and readings to understand
what influenced Frierson, Hood, Hopson and Hughes in considering this theory as a vital
one in the evaluation phase for principals. At the beginning it was very difficult to find
literature and studies to link the decision-making process and sense of disempowerment that
our principals in Bahrain feel, because most of the studies focuses on the influence of
decision- making and categorizing types of decision- making based on various theories.
However, it was hard to find a study that measures decision based on a set of standards.
Therefore, instead of narrowing down my topic to the correlation between decision making
and senses of disempowerment, my broad readings showed me the necessity for re-visiting
previously published reports in Bahrain and find out more on how decision-making as a
process is evaluated. I realized that I began to appreciate the Culturally Responsive
Evaluation theory even more I learned that the depth of understanding the purpose of
evaluation to make the decision is critical to provide constructive feedback.

My course work and its influence on my thinking and work

The last two papers I wrote for the courses, EDUC 873 and EDRS 820 showed me
the need to do more research on finding literature focused on decision making to provide
constructive feedback. One specific result of my paper EDRS 820 lead to initially being
approved by my chair committee Dr. Bauer Scott to focus in my advance internship on how
the Culturally Responsive Evaluation (CRE) theory impact decision making. The biased

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

social structure of the school and policies that does not address the root causes of problems
and having treatments which does not address the sociocultural background makes it
difficult on principals to improve their decision-making approaches. My hope is to further
my understanding to provide an effective CRE and treatment planning for the principals in
order to incorporate relevant cultural factors and reduce the negative effect of using one
model with a fix standards with all. Along with my Advance Internship Couse, I hope to
determine the design methods that I will be using for my final research.

Intellectual goals
After spending time reading a lot of work for the professor Marvin C. Alkin (2012)
in the field of evaluation , it advanced my thinking on the topic and confirmed to my
intellectual thinking that I need to further explore other issues related to decision making.
Alkins contribution to the field of evaluation opened my eyes to understand other what
evaluation can be further investigated to enhance decision making in many aspects,
improving accountability, producing new knowledge, political gain, engagement and
interaction, external and internal driven changes, quality and depth of evaluation and finally
awareness of the standards and purpose of evaluation. I hope that by exploring all of these
numerous aspects of evaluation will help me to determine how the use of evaluation can
provide constructive feedback from a theoretical and a practical way.

Professional goals with evidence of changes since completing portfolio I

One of my primary professional goals after completing portfolio one was to collect better
evidence to identify the exact problem principals encounter at their respective schools and

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

show its impact. Finding the problem and reasons of why the current decision-making
process is ineffective in facilitating the principals role was the main challenge that I had to
clarify before moving forward in my research. Initially, I was interested in improving the
decision making process, to strategically structure decisions to help principals in seeking the
best alternatives. At the beginning my professional goals were centered on Arnove,R.F.
(2013)functionalismtheorythathighlightshowprincipalsshouldconverttheirintentions
intoactionsinordertoincreasetheirefficiency.Myprofessionalgoalswasshapedby
variousreadingsforArnove,Hasan Hariri, Richard Monypenny and Murray Prideaux
(2015) and Kao (2007) which helped me to develop my thinking that decision making
should be framed and structured from a leadership style perspective. Through EDRS 820
Evaluation Methods for Educational Program and Curricula I extended my professional
goals on how evaluation can serve in facilitating decision making as pivotal point of my
thinking. Simply I have advanced my goal and moved beyond just developing decision in
schools, to transforming decision to create authentic and democratic avenues for principals
in the governance of their schools. Another extension to my thoughts during the EDRS 820
course is to increase the principals attention to process use of the evaluation. Therefore, my
future professional goal will be to focus on how principals make the evaluation process use
fit in the heart of decision-making process and as an integrated systematic mechanism. This
will include addressing the need by the principals in Bahrain and their views of what
Yarbrough, Shulha, Hopson and Carthers (2011) explored as a measurable and meaningful
evaluation. They believed that decision-making can be maximized using evaluation to lead
principals to descriptions, insights, judgments, decisions and recommendations. My hope in
my pursuing my professional goal is to explore theses areas of research and look into what

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

the current performance management system used for being the latest evaluation process
taking place to limit mistakes. Thus being said I will keep in the back of my mind the
question of what do principals attribute failures on poor decision and how can they
maximize decision-making to achieve the best outcome?

AN ANALYTIC AND PERSONAL ESSAY

References
Arnove,R.F.(2013).Comparativeeducation:thedialecticoftheglobalandthelocal
(Fourthedition).Lanham,Maryland:Rowman&LittlefieldPublishers.
Bernhardt,V.(2004).Dataanalysisforcontinuousschoolimprovement.Larchmont,NY:
EyeonEducation.
Kao,P.H.,andH.Kao.2007.TaiwaneseExecutivesLeadershipStylesandtheir
PreferredDecisionmakingModelsUsedinMainlandChina.JournalofAmerican
AcademyofBusiness,Cambridge10(2):7179.
Alkin,M.C.(2012).Evaluationessentials:FormAtoZ.NewYork,NY:Guilford.
Hood,S.,Hopson,R.K.,&Frierson,H.T.(Eds.).(2015).Continuingthejourneyto
repositioncultureandculturalcontextinevaluationtheoryandpractice.Charlotte,
NC:InformationAgePublishing,Inc.
Yarbrough,D.B.(Ed.).(2011).Theprogramevaluationstandards:aguideforevaluators
andevaluationusers(3rded).ThousandOaks:SAGEPublications.