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An Exploration of the Formative Experiences of Teaching Internships

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Australian initial teacher education receives continual critique, with professional experience constantly scrutinised. Sandi Fielder discusses an Australian internship program within an urban university, capturing participants’ perspectives on learning to teach.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 2, 2024

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This video video is a detailed discussion by an education leader reflecting on their motivation and research related to teacher internships, particularly focusing on a 12-month unpaid internship program with mentorship for graduate teachers. The speaker emphasizes the importance of retaining quality teachers and how internships contribute to making graduates classroom-ready. They note a gap in literature regarding the direct impact of internships on graduates, despite some existing studies on principal perceptions and policy.

The research employed mixed methods, including surveys and semi-structured interviews, to gather insights from participants who completed teaching degrees between 2010 and 2020. The noteworthy finding is that all interviewed interns are still teaching six years later, indicating effective retention. Participants highlighted the significance of being part of a school community, engaging in collaborative practices, and developing their teaching identity over the course of their internship.

The speaker elaborates on how these internships provide consistent, real-world experience, allowing interns to learn classroom management from the beginning to the end of the school year. They underscore the role of communities of practice and links to teacher resilience, proposing a framework that connects these elements to support early career teachers.

The conclusion stresses the need for recognizing the value of internships in teacher preparation and suggests that policy changes could enhance funding for such programs to ensure that more pre-service teachers can engage in these invaluable experiences. The speaker advocates for broader research to explore the internship concept's application to a more diverse demographic of pre-service teachers.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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As a school leader

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and, in the education leadership realm

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for over a decade, my concern was

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how we are keeping our graduate teachers

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as they come through to us.

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And I was lucky enough

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to actually experience having interns in my school

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during my, leadership days.

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As I went through, we were part of what's called the WA

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Combined University's Training Scheme, which was part

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of a nationally funded program,

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in the early 2010 decade.

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And I had the privilege of working with Susan Ledger,

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who was part of the development of the program.

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Um, and it was basically brought around the premise

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that we need quality graduates

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that are classroom ready when they hit

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the ground in schools.

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So that's where my interest came in

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and why I sort of have followed the internship program

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for quite some time, even

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after I departed in the classroom setting

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or the school setting and moved into the university sphere.

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I, kept following the internship

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and kept looking at what was it that made an impact

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and was kept on asking people, you know,

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what research has been done, what has been done,

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and found that there was a real, hole in the literature

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in, the mid 2000

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and teens, Gemma Fox will did some research

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around principal perspec perceptions.

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However, there's nothing that actually talked about what

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impact an internship does for the actual graduate teacher.

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So internships in Australia are actually, there's

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so many different versions of them,

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so many different terminologies.

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Some are paid, some are unpaid.

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Um, some are with a mentor teacher

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and some are without a mentor teacher.

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In the context of where my research was,

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the internship is a 12 month unpaid internship

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in a school with a mentor teacher.

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And participants were in that classroom for a minimum

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of two days every week teaching alongside being mentored

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and actually learning the ropes of

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what a teacher's role was.

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So it was a little bit different to those

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that follow a traditional pathway where they came in

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for a period of time and then stepped back into university.

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So these people were situated in a school for that full year

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and they actually, were part of

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what was team doing

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or deemed as the school team.

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So they had school uniforms.

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If staff were wearing uniforms,

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they had the school name badge.

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And those little things just made them feel

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as if they were part of that school community.

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And importantly, what we've sort of seen

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and what I've experienced is

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that the internships produce really high quality teachers

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that actually know what they're getting into

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and where they're going to be

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when they first start teaching.

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They're really classroom ready for another term that we use,

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and they're really critical in building resilience

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and understanding of what it means to be a teacher.

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So as far as the literature goes, there's limited literature

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around internships in the term that,

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and in the area that I'm talking about.

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And as I said, Gemma Foxwell looked at principal's

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perspectives and perceptions on what the internship meant.

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And Sue Ledger

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and Leslie Vidovich had looked at some policy

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and how that relates with internships in 2018.

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However, there was nothing that actually looked at

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what the actual graduates had to say about the impact

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of teaching internships.

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So, you know, there'd been a lot of research

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around attrition

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and, staff in schools through the Mackenzie's team

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with the Australian Council for Educational Research,

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where they looked at staff in schools survey

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and Weldon actually looked at early career teacher Atte

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attrition following on from that survey.

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And at the time, the Australian teacher workforce

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data was still being developed.

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So there really wasn't any data from that tool either

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that could link in here.

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And of course, importantly

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because I was looking at communities of practice

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and how this situates students

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and pre-service teachers into

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a community looking at vendors and LA and LA

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and vendors situated learning

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and everything along that side with communities

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of practice was really important.

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And of course a lot of this builds on research

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that Linda Darling Hammond and Diana Maya have done

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and those sorts of people previously looking at retention

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and attrition of teachers,

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which is such an important element

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of what's been discussed on the education landscape.

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So for my research methods,

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I used an explanatory sequential mixed methods process

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where I had a survey

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that was based on Mackenzie's staff in school survey,

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but also dins teacher self-efficacy,

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survey scale.

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So I used a mixture of those to collect data

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through a survey which informed my

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semi-structured interviews from my participants later.

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So we sent out using the university's alumni team

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invitations to graduates who had participated in any degree

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between 2010 and 2020.

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So any teaching degree that is.

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So then we got a number of responses

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and we filled those into those

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that had followed a traditional pathway

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and those that had followed the internship pathway.

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And we asked those that were in the internship pathway if

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they would be willing to continue on

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and participate in the interviews in the second stage

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of the research.

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And I managed to have 117 completed surveys.

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34 of them were interns

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and 83 were people who had followed

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through on their traditional pathways.

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So it was just under a 10% response rate to the survey,

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which was really good.

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From that, I managed

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to have eight semi-structured interviews from

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the internship group.

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And it's interesting to note

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because this was done right in

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20 21, 20 22, right through covid.

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So we offered quite a range of options so

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that interviewees could engage both online or face-to-face

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and however people felt most comfortable.

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Um, and I had interviewees

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who were from such a diverse range, so it was really good.

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It wasn't that just one group responded

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and went, it's all mature age stu, graduates,

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or it's just graduates that were straight outta high school.

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I had respondents that were from straight outta high school

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to quite mature in their age.

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Some did their internship in a metropolitan setting,

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some did their internship in a rural setting.

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So it really allowed to have that diversity

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of responses there.

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And it's interesting to note that all eight of the ones

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that continued

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with this response are still in the teaching profession six

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years plus down the line.

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So that means that we are retaining these

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interns in our profession, which is really important.

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So from there, from the eight interviews,

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what we found was that the important thing,

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and probably the most important element is

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that teaching is about being part of a community

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and it's about building those relationships

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with their colleagues alongside them.

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So this is where the communities of practice really started

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to shine through and demonstrate how's important being part

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of a community while doing practice

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actually developed their understanding

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and their meaning of teaching,

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but also about who they were as a teacher.

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So developing their own personal identity.

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So all the way through they were learning as belonging

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as a group, but then they were learning as doing

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as they're practicing, they were learning as an experience

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and they were learning as they became a teacher.

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And it's very much based around that situated learning

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by LA and weger.

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So it really

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provided the pre pre-service teachers

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with an extended experience in schools in a continuous

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and supportive manner throughout a whole school year,

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right from the first day of the school right

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to the final day of the school year.

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They got to experience how things

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went from day one.

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And one of the participants sort of spoke about

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how it's all well and good coming in in term three

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and doing your final placement,

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but you don't get to know how to establish routines

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and get those settings

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and, expectations organized

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at the beginning of the year.

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And they found by being in the internship

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and being involved in that, they got that experience

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and they also got to experience how a school actually

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shuts down at the end of a school year.

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What are all those little administrative

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requirements that you've gotta do?

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All of those sorts of things that have to occur

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as the year winds down.

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So that whole being situated in a school

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and being part of that was really, really important.

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Participants also felt that they were part of that school,

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part of the community, part of a group of learning learners.

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And they talked about how it was really good to see

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how when times are tough staff pulled together

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and they worked really hard together.

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It may have been, you know,

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that it's a particularly stressful time with reporting

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and they saw how staff supported each other,

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or it may have been that an event happened within the school

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that was unexpected, but the level of collegial

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and community that occurred at that time,

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they didn't necessarily experience when they were on

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that periphery of learning coming in and out at short term.

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Whereas being there all year long, they certainly got

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to experience that.

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They also really managed to,

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received really focused support and meaning of,

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and the meaning of teaching while

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they're in the school setting.

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And one of the interns gave an example of

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how the school facilitated

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and supported her when she was struggling with,

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assessment and how the school sat down

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and they talked about how to do assessment

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and came up with some strategies to apply

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and then supported her through the process, process

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and then took her through moderation

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and how to actually work with her collaborative team

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to upskill herself.

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And importantly, they spoke about

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how they felt really empowered, how

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they didn't have to

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have every lesson running at 110%

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when they're on placement.

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They, they were willing to take risks

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and have lessons that failed,

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and they felt that the internship gave them that opportunity

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that they knew that they could be there over a,

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a prolonged period of time and have a failure of a lesson,

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but it didn't impact ultimately on

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where they got at the end of their placement.

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So it's not just about what happens there,

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but how it impacts them as how they see themselves as well.

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So as a result, I developed teacher career

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and progression framework,

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and that framework shows you

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how those two elements link together

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and are a crucial element of

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supporting early career teachers.

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So I managed to see

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how the early career Teacher Resilience framework linked

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and worked closely with the communities of practice

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and how the two frameworks interconnect with each other.

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And it really depends on the focus that you are looking at

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with a comment as to how those two

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frameworks come together

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and become what I've developed as the teacher

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career development.

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So I realized that the communities

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of practice didn't work in isolation.

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It linked very closely

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with the Early Career Teacher Resilience framework

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by Johnson et our,

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and the two frameworks which allow, movement

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between both, which I overlap

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and interconnect depending on the focus

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of the content became really important.

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And so I developed the teacher development

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and progression framework from there.

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From, so I suppose the conclusion is really summed up in

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what one of my participants said to me is

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that the internship gave her confidence.

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She felt that she had respectability from the hierarchy,

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from admin, et cetera,

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and that overall it gave her

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credibility with her colleagues.

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So in summary, the internships really strengthen

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that preparation for teaching.

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It connects the pre-service teacher to communities

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of teachers and schools.

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It consolidates the purpose and meaning of teaching

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and underpins teacher identity work as well.

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So there's a lot of implications.

14:47.875 --> 14:49.015
It would be really nice

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to see teaching internships used wider in the

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Australian landscape.

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One of the biggest concerns is the affordability

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of an unpaid commitment, particularly in times

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where we're really struggling

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with teacher shortages at the moment, seeing how

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that unpaid commitment has

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a big impact on interns is significant.

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Um, but it could be a model that could be funded

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and supported in order to support our pre-service teachers

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and early career teachers

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to remain in our profession longitudinally.

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So, you know, if policy could change

15:27.585 --> 15:30.685
and see that we can actually fund

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and pay these people to be there two, three days a week,

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we're going to have better prepared graduates

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who are out there and really understand what teaching means.

15:43.385 --> 15:45.685
As far as future research, I really believe

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that we really need to look at

15:48.145 --> 15:51.405
how this can be used in a wider study,

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and look at how the program concept can be extended.

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And also really exploring how the conceptual framework

15:59.365 --> 16:02.525
that I've developed might work with a broader demographic

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of pre-service teachers, not just with those in the,

16:06.245 --> 16:07.725
within the internship program.

00:00 - As a school leader and, in the education leadership realm for over a decade, my concern was how we are keeping our graduate teachers as they come through to us. And I was lucky enough

00:14 - to actually experience having interns in my school during my, leadership days. As I went through, we were part of what's called the WA Combined University's Training Scheme, which was part of a nationally funded program, in the early 2010 decade. And I had the privilege of working with Susan Ledger, who was part of the development of the program. and it was basically brought around the premise that we need quality graduates

00:48 - that are classroom ready when they hit the ground in schools. So that's where my interest came in and why I sort of have followed the internship program for quite some time, even after I departed in the classroom setting or the school setting and moved into the university sphere. I, kept following the internship and kept looking at what was it that made an impact and was kept on asking people, you know,

01:21 - what research has been done, what has been done, and found that there was a real, hole in the literature in, the mid 2000 and teens, Gemma Fox will did some research around principal perspec perceptions. However, there's nothing that actually talked about what impact an internship does for the actual graduate teacher. So internships in Australia are actually, there's so many different versions of them, so many different terminologies.

01:56 - Some are paid, some are unpaid. some are with a mentor teacher and some are without a mentor teacher. In the context of where my research was, the internship is a 12 month unpaid internship in a school with a mentor teacher. And participants were in that classroom for a minimum of two days every week teaching alongside being mentored and actually learning the ropes of what a teacher's role was.

02:29 - So it was a little bit different to those that follow a traditional pathway where they came in for a period of time and then stepped back into university. So these people were situated in a school for that full year and they actually, were part of what was team doing or deemed as the school team. So they had school uniforms. If staff were wearing uniforms, they had the school name badge.

02:58 - And those little things just made them feel as if they were part of that school community. And importantly, what we've sort of seen and what I've experienced is that the internships produce really high quality teachers that actually know what they're getting into and where they're going to be when they first start teaching. They're really classroom ready for another term that we use, and they're really critical in building resilience

03:29 - and understanding of what it means to be a teacher. So as far as the literature goes, there's limited literature around internships in the term that, and in the area that I'm talking about. And as I said, Gemma Foxwell looked at principal's perspectives and perceptions on what the internship meant. And Sue Ledger and Leslie Vidovich had looked at some policy and how that relates with internships in 2018. However, there was nothing that actually looked at

04:05 - what the actual graduates had to say about the impact of teaching internships. So, you know, there'd been a lot of research around attrition and, staff in schools through the Mackenzie's team with the Australian Council for Educational Research, where they looked at staff in schools survey and Weldon actually looked at early career teacher Atte attrition following on from that survey. And at the time, the Australian teacher workforce

04:39 - data was still being developed. So there really wasn't any data from that tool either that could link in here. And of course, importantly because I was looking at communities of practice and how this situates students and pre-service teachers into a community looking at vendors and LA and LA and vendors situated learning and everything along that side with communities

05:07 - of practice was really important. And of course a lot of this builds on research that Linda Darling Hammond and Diana Maya have done and those sorts of people previously looking at retention and attrition of teachers, which is such an important element of what's been discussed on the education landscape. So for my research methods, I used an explanatory sequential mixed methods process where I had a survey

05:38 - that was based on Mackenzie's staff in school survey, but also dins teacher self-efficacy, survey scale. So I used a mixture of those to collect data through a survey which informed my semi-structured interviews from my participants later. So we sent out using the university's alumni team invitations to graduates who had participated in any degree between 2010 and 2020. So any teaching degree that is.

06:15 - So then we got a number of responses and we filled those into those that had followed a traditional pathway and those that had followed the internship pathway. And we asked those that were in the internship pathway if they would be willing to continue on and participate in the interviews in the second stage of the research. And I managed to have 117 completed surveys. 34 of them were interns

06:45 - and 83 were people who had followed through on their traditional pathways. So it was just under a 10% response rate to the survey, which was really good. From that, I managed to have eight semi-structured interviews from the internship group. And it's interesting to note because this was done right in 20 21, 20 22, right through covid.

07:09 - So we offered quite a range of options so that interviewees could engage both online or face-to-face and however people felt most comfortable. and I had interviewees who were from such a diverse range, so it was really good. It wasn't that just one group responded and went, it's all mature age stu, graduates, or it's just graduates that were straight outta high school. I had respondents that were from straight outta high school to quite mature in their age.

07:45 - Some did their internship in a metropolitan setting, some did their internship in a rural setting. So it really allowed to have that diversity of responses there. And it's interesting to note that all eight of the ones that continued with this response are still in the teaching profession six years plus down the line. So that means that we are retaining these interns in our profession, which is really important.

08:13 - So from there, from the eight interviews, what we found was that the important thing, and probably the most important element is that teaching is about being part of a community and it's about building those relationships with their colleagues alongside them. So this is where the communities of practice really started to shine through and demonstrate how's important being part of a community while doing practice actually developed their understanding

08:46 - and their meaning of teaching, but also about who they were as a teacher. So developing their own personal identity. So all the way through they were learning as belonging as a group, but then they were learning as doing as they're practicing, they were learning as an experience and they were learning as they became a teacher. And it's very much based around that situated learning by LA and weger. So it really

09:18 - provided the pre pre-service teachers with an extended experience in schools in a continuous and supportive manner throughout a whole school year, right from the first day of the school right to the final day of the school year. They got to experience how things went from day one. And one of the participants sort of spoke about how it's all well and good coming in in term three and doing your final placement,

09:46 - but you don't get to know how to establish routines and get those settings and, expectations organized at the beginning of the year. And they found by being in the internship and being involved in that, they got that experience and they also got to experience how a school actually shuts down at the end of a school year. What are all those little administrative requirements that you've gotta do?

10:12 - All of those sorts of things that have to occur as the year winds down. So that whole being situated in a school and being part of that was really, really important. Participants also felt that they were part of that school, part of the community, part of a group of learning learners. And they talked about how it was really good to see how when times are tough staff pulled together and they worked really hard together. It may have been, you know,

10:47 - that it's a particularly stressful time with reporting and they saw how staff supported each other, or it may have been that an event happened within the school that was unexpected, but the level of collegial and community that occurred at that time, they didn't necessarily experience when they were on that periphery of learning coming in and out at short term. Whereas being there all year long, they certainly got to experience that. They also really managed to,

11:25 - received really focused support and meaning of, and the meaning of teaching while they're in the school setting. And one of the interns gave an example of how the school facilitated and supported her when she was struggling with, assessment and how the school sat down and they talked about how to do assessment and came up with some strategies to apply and then supported her through the process, process

11:53 - and then took her through moderation and how to actually work with her collaborative team to upskill herself. And importantly, they spoke about how they felt really empowered, how they didn't have to have every lesson running at 110% when they're on placement. They, they were willing to take risks and have lessons that failed,

12:21 - and they felt that the internship gave them that opportunity that they knew that they could be there over a, a prolonged period of time and have a failure of a lesson, but it didn't impact ultimately on where they got at the end of their placement. So it's not just about what happens there, but how it impacts them as how they see themselves as well. So as a result, I developed teacher career and progression framework, and that framework shows you

12:57 - how those two elements link together and are a crucial element of supporting early career teachers. So I managed to see how the early career Teacher Resilience framework linked and worked closely with the communities of practice and how the two frameworks interconnect with each other. And it really depends on the focus that you are looking at with a comment as to how those two frameworks come together

13:28 - and become what I've developed as the teacher career development. So I realized that the communities of practice didn't work in isolation. It linked very closely with the Early Career Teacher Resilience framework by Johnson et our, and the two frameworks which allow, movement between both, which I overlap and interconnect depending on the focus

13:56 - of the content became really important. And so I developed the teacher development and progression framework from there. From, so I suppose the conclusion is really summed up in what one of my participants said to me is that the internship gave her confidence. She felt that she had respectability from the hierarchy, from admin, et cetera, and that overall it gave her credibility with her colleagues.

14:24 - So in summary, the internships really strengthen that preparation for teaching. It connects the pre-service teacher to communities of teachers and schools. It consolidates the purpose and meaning of teaching and underpins teacher identity work as well. So there's a lot of implications. It would be really nice to see teaching internships used wider in the Australian landscape.

14:54 - One of the biggest concerns is the affordability of an unpaid commitment, particularly in times where we're really struggling with teacher shortages at the moment, seeing how that unpaid commitment has a big impact on interns is significant. but it could be a model that could be funded and supported in order to support our pre-service teachers and early career teachers to remain in our profession longitudinally.

15:24 - So, you know, if policy could change and see that we can actually fund and pay these people to be there two, three days a week, we're going to have better prepared graduates who are out there and really understand what teaching means. As far as future research, I really believe that we really need to look at how this can be used in a wider study, and look at how the program concept can be extended. And also really exploring how the conceptual framework

15:59 - that I've developed might work with a broader demographic of pre-service teachers, not just with those in the, within the internship program.

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