Discuss why EI is thought to be a useful ‘tool’ or agent of change for leadership development in Saudi Arabia

Report 1:
This proposal has the potential to open up an interesting area for interrogation, but as yet, is some way off being developed enough to go forward. There are a number of issues that you need to reconsider in order to shape the proposal in a way that would suggest a sustainable and contemporary doctoral-level study. The following points might help do this:

         The working title needs to be less convoluted – this helps signify a clearer story at the outset

         The two key components driving the study are not clearly defined or articulated: Emotional Intelligence and ‘educational supervisors / supervision’.

–       The subtleties, complexities and intricacies of the SA education system and its approach to leadership need to come out much more to help the reader understand why EI is considered an important provocation for change;
–       SA is an unfamiliar context for a UK audience, so more work needs to be done to contextualise the movements being made back and forth across the role of directors, the work of educational supervisors, teachers and the nature and practices of leadership and supervision that operates between these.

The rationale for using EI is unclear. In order to be more explicit about why EI is an important ‘agent of change’ in this study, you need to include:

–       Why EI is it thought to be a useful ‘tool’ or agent of change for leadership development in Saudi Arabia;
–     A summary / critique of existing studies linking EI to leadership;
–     A critique of any assumed and implicit link being made between EI, improved educational leadership and Saudi Arabia’s economic development;
–     More criticality and thought about whether or not applying EI to a Saudi Arabian context is enough to make it relevant.
–     Some recognition of the dangers of EI becoming a kind of ‘Cargo Cult’ – what are the issues when a practice / concept is taken from one context and applied to another? For example, issues of colonisation; misappropriation; the non-translation of ideas; cultural negligence etc.
–     How might the use of EI in a SA context potentially establish and maintain an unhelpful binary between east and west, with a model of preferred practice emerging along the way?
–     What can the use of EI in a Saudi Arabian leadership context contribute to knowledge in this area?

The gesture to gender seems spurious and underdeveloped

The proposal needs to develop a more critical methodological framework. For example, I am unclear why you need to work with the idea of triangulation – this seems counterproductive within this kind of qualitative study and would need sturdier justification.

you need to think more about the broader ethical implications of the work beyond the checklist. For example, complexities of power, participate agency, ongoing informed consent etc.

Overall, I would suggest that you need to undertake a more rigorous approach to critically engaging with both the substantive and methodological literature in preparation for resubmitting this proposal.

A clearer and stronger story about leadership in SA needs to be told, substantiated by the literature. This story needs to be either the one you want to challenge and/or one with ‘gaps’ in that  wants to address. So, what is the story against which the study will lie? This will then allow a marking out of how the study challenges a dominant story and in doing so make a significant contribution to knowledge. As this is going to be a long and sustained study, it is useful to demonstrate how the study connects to a contemporary debate – what might the contemporary debate be here?

There are a number of repetitions of ideas (e.g. throughout the synopsis), grammatical mistakes and some general carelessness of presentation that need to be addressed.