Anagha Mahajan, Archana Vadeyar
Internship lays the foundation to development of teaching
skills, application of pedagogy & gaining confidence in classroom
instructions. Post-Covid, educators were nearly compelled to embrace technology
causing an unforeseen transition from in-person to online mode. This study is
the primary step to our ongoing study and survey on the impact of COVID19 on
the teacher education program. Internship is a well-accepted active learning
method for trainee teachers. The objective is to understand the challenges
faced by trainee teachers during online internship & to discuss the
measures to overcome some of these challenges. During internship trainee
teachers can develop their interactions & lesson planning abilities, to
understand their students in a better way. An abrupt transition from offline to
online mode implied many challenges and overcoming huge obstacles. Few
challenges discussed are shirking traditional mindset to embrace virtual
classrooms, lack of infrastructure and facilities for shifting to online
teaching, non-availability of schools & inadequate number of lessons for
trainees, less than expected exposure to classroom teaching and so forth. Some
of the possible measures are planning more practice lessons among peer groups,
observations by peers & experts, arranging guidance by experts, videos of
lessons by trainees etc. Through this program, trainee teachers are molded to
understand subject content, broadening of mindsets, practices in pedagogy,
psychology of students etc. Internship plays a crucial role in imbibing
appropriate skills & attitude in future teachers. The question that arises
is- can online internships adequately prepare trainees to handle situations
that arise in T-L contexts?
Unexpected drifts and Challenges, Teaching-learning
practices, online internship, trainee teachers
VOL.14, ISSUE No.1, March 2022