Career Goal

Khaled Alkandari

Following is a description of my career goal. The statement of career goal will be the milestone to the success of my graduate study in Instructional Systems Program.

I was a Lab’s Teacher in College of Basic Education – The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET) until I got my master’s degree in Instructional System. Later, I became a teacher and taught different courses. I occasionally have twenty one hours per week; because our department a shortage in teachers. My goal is to be a professor at college of basic education in my home country, Kuwait. In 1998, I completed my master’s degree in the field of Instructional Systems from The Pennsylvania State University. Since that time, my goal was to pursue my graduate study so that I can have a better understanding of my field.

Several reasons have been the foundation of my career’s goal. First, I have worked more than ten years as either a teacher or a trainer. Teaching is what I enjoy doing. I believe that I have been a successful teacher for college school students and trainees from vocational institutes and K-12 schools which enhanced my ambition to go forward and set a plan for completing my study.

The second reason is that I have built a solid background in education during my life as a student and as a teacher. My life has been changed after my master’s degree in Instructional Systems from Penn State University. I learned a lot from many scholars in INSYS program. Furthermore, fortunately I was able to add some values to our department (Instructional Technology) in my college such as criterion of learners’ evaluation and competition between students, teacher’s assistance, and professors. I did some good changes in Training Field Course (9 credits). For example, students present their projects in a poster session in the end of class. This poster session changed the idea of the role of instructional specialists in schools’ administrations.

In addition, INSYS program has helped me to improve my English and explore the environment of education in the United States by conducting research and projects, and to know and to learn from the many scholars in the fields of Instructional Systems, Workforce Education, Adult Education programs, and Educational Psychology.

The Professor’s duty is not only limited to teaching, but to also conduct research, presentations, as well as being an active participant in conferences, forums, workshops, meetings, etc. Therefore, I have to finish my doctoral degree to be able to do what I unable to do during my master’s degree. Nowadays, there are more than five private universities in Kuwait. This will increase our duties to improve our education and spread our field in these universities through teaching and presentations.

In the direction of increasing my knowledge and my understanding the field of Instructional systems and workforce education, I need to find out more about these fields in the following ways:

First, I am looking forward to being a participant in the professional societies in the United States and in my home country such as AERA[1], ASTD[2], AECT[3], Learning Sciences and Educational Researcher journals or any other journal in the field of Instructional Systems, Educational Technology, and Human Resources and Development. Journals published by those organizations will be one of my resources for my future research.

Second, scholars at Instructional Systems and other programs are a rich resource that I can use to increase my knowledge and skills in this field. The other resource will be researchers and scholars in Arabic countries including my home country Kuwait, who worked for many years and put forward a big effort in developing similar field. Also, there are many professors in universities and colleges who did a good job in the field of training programs and curriculum development and they will be a great resource of information which will help me during my research there.

During my Master’s degree 1998 and doctoral courses I had a real opportunity to learn something new. I have had the opportunity to learn from scholars such as Dr. Dwyer, Dr. Ali, Dr. Susan, Dr, Rothwell, and Dr. Chermack who put excellent efforts to enrich my knowledge and skills in many ways. I still have more to learn from our program’s scholars.

My focus for the next semester in addition to my course work and assignments is to start writing for publication and submitting some of my work for presenting in conferences. I am working on a couple of papers that will be published in academic journals. This would not have occurred without the encouragement and orientation from my mentors.

I believe that I have clear vision to achieve my goal and to obtain a Doctoral degree in Instructional Systems is related to my needs as a teacher which will benefit me and my country in the future. Kuwait has a large potential that enforces scholars to develop the educational system in order to change it dynamically.

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[1] The American Educational Research Association (AERA), founded in 1916.

[2] American Society for Training & Development (ASTD), started in 1944.

[3]Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), founded in 1923.