The Context and Introduction
Several recent reports on educational reform in this
province provide
a discourse on school improvement. The reports suggest the need for developing
a positive school culture, since such a culture is necessary to attain
the following outcomes:
The reports also talk about transmitting to students a set of personal, spiritual, cultural and critical values for citizenship and democracy. They also suggest that the school improvement process should be student centered and should take the developmental needs of students into account. For an in-depth review of the reports one should read Katherine Dundas' Master's thesis in which she critically evaluates many other points in those reports.
Following the discourse presented in the educational reform reports, I suggest we can talk about the need to develop reflective and critical internship cultures to attain goals set in the reports. Not only should the focus be on developing reflective and critical internship cultures, but such cultures should be built on the real and anticipated needs of teacher interns. After all, the internship exists mainly, if not solely, for teacher interns.
The way I see it, there are many internship cultures, and
therefore
I suggest that we should not think or talk about the culture of
internship or a culture of internship. I say this because it is
obvious that teacher interns grapple with multiple contextual and situational
realities which constitute the total internship process.
For the purpose of discussion in this paper, I would like to
mention
three predominant cultures which the teacher interns and those who work
with them during the internship process need to fully understand and learn
about. These three cultures are:
It should be noted that each culture identified above can itself be conceptualized as having many sub-cultures, and so on. This is so because the total internship process and teacher education themselves are embedded in multiple and complex social, cultural, political, economic and organizational realities.
Before I discuss these three cultures, a few more general comments on the interns, the internship process, the school, and the society are in order.
Teacher Interns, the Internship Process, and School Improvement Initiatives
Both our own research and other research in these areas show that teacher interns will sooner or later inherit complex school and classroom cultures. In these contexts, as the reform reports points out, they at least would need to know the following:
Preparation of programs for school is a very important task. Therefore, teacher interns should be able to prepare programs to be used in schools. The structure of these programs must provide their students a structure of intellectual skills which will include inquiry, inference, reflection, critical and creative decision working, analysis and evaluation. Moreover, these programs should enhance students' technological competence and prepare them as good citizens. Similarly, teacher interns also are expected to learn how to address and nurture students' physical, emotional, social, spiritual and moral needs.
In the final analysis, the school and the internship process are expected to produce educated persons in this province. The educated person, according to Learning for All: The Foundation Program Report (1996), is
. . .one who is equipped to respond appropriately to the intellectual, social, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual, and physical dimensions of life, such that he or she is enabled and motivated.
The reports suggest several school improvement initiatives in order to produce educated populace. For example, the Challenge for Excellence Reports (1990) states:
A school improvement initiative should not focus solely on enhancing academic achievement but should also focus on a continual transmission of personal, spiritual, and cultural values, values which have enriched the lives of Newfoundlanders for many years.
A change process can be evolutionary or revolutionary. In democratic societies, an evolutionary change process is often more effective. This is accepted by the above report as it points out:
It must be recognized that change is a process which is
carried out
over a period of time. All initiatives cannot be effectively implemented
at once.
And it should also be realized that
School improvement initiatives are not a top down, or bottom up exercise, but form a shared responsibility which requires a shared response.
The report recognizes important roles played by educational personnel and other partners in the change process. It states:
Educational personnel involved with the school improvement process must receive adequate time, personal and technical support, and the encouragement to undertake the tasks required to improve conditions for students.
The discussion presented above clearly leads us to conclude that it is obvious that teacher interns have to learn an integrated approach to curriculum which allows them to do all the things mentioned above in the context of the school. These expectations held for the teacher interns clearly put great responsibilities on the shoulders of cooperating teachers, internship supervisors and school personnel. All these people, as partners, are expected to enable teacher interns to learn a lot. To meet this immense responsibility, a great deal of thinking, talking and doing is required. For it is through conversations with each other that we are able to resolve our problems critically, creatively, imaginatively and reflectively.
The Three Cultures of the Internship
A. The Partners and Their Cultures
I return now to the discussion of three internship cultures: cultures of partnership, cultures of collaboration and cultures of reflective and critical internship in education.
As discussed above, our schools are expected to produce
well-rounded
educated persons to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century and
beyond. Such educated persons can not be produced without the help of various
partners involved in creating, managing, implementing and evaluating the
curriculum in schools and the internship process. Who are these partners?
These partners are (the list is not meant to be exhaustive or in order
of importance):
All the partners have their own groups, organizations and cultures. There is a need to understand their cultures in a systematic way, if the goal is to improve our schools and educate the populace in a desired direction. This will require, among other things, creating new forms of institutions and communication networks so that we all can have pragmatic, open and endless conversations with each other. For it is through unending interactions with each other that we develop our self. The self in turn enables us to create new forms of knowledge. Based on new awareness we are able to imagine new societies and hope to create them through our actions.
B. Cultures of Collaboration
I have just identified many partners involved in the internship process in the previous section. Many of these partners regularly collaborate with each other to achieve certain educational outcomes in this province. For example, the school districts, the schools, the cooperating teachers, the internship supervisors, the teacher interns and the Faculty of Education collaborate in the delivery of the teacher internship program.
The point is that collaboration, as a form of interaction and conversation, creates its own culture. A great deal has been written in this area and the research is extensive. We have reviewed some of the research in this area and have produced "local knowledge" which shed light on what it means to be a cooperating teacher, internship supervisor and teacher intern in this province and what it means to collaborate with the Faculty of Education as the only institution of higher learning in this province. These meanings become part of the total internship culture, which in turn affect the degree to which the internship program in this province can be implemented successfully.
Therefore, we need to understand various elements of cultures of collaboration. We have, like many others, come to realize that any collaboration is based on trust, give and take (exchange), respect, care and continuous dialogue among all parties involved on an equal basis. It is based on a sense of humility among the participants, acceptance of differences and tolerance of many previously unheard voices. The "global village" built on the foundation of collaboration is not a village built on the unified voice of the people who live in it. This village defies any single true common canon. On the contrary, it is a village built on people's ability and skills in recognizing and incorporating into their daily actions the contradictory voices and experiences of many people who live in it. Collaboration is based on reciprocal exchanges in which participants feel empowered, enabled and socially mobile. It is based on a set of attitudes which encourages inclusion of all partners rather than their exclusion. Collaborative practices and life styles thrive on democratic principles of participation, fairness, justice and equality.
C. Cultures of Reflective and Critical Internship
Similarly, much is written on reflection, reflective and critical education and internship. A rich and extensive literature also exists in this area which links reflective education and internship to larger issues of social policy and nation-building. We have reviewed some of this literature and how it impacts on the locally generated internship process in this province.
Briefly, cultures of reflective and critical internship thrive on conversations of hope and possibilities. These cultures are capable of transcending discourses of despair, gloom and doom. Dooms day talk characterizes many of the education reform reports produced in this province and elsewhere. The reports use piles of statistics to create a profile of the educational system in this province in which very little good is seen to be happening. The numbers are used to create images of crises in society, rather than positively portraying the life styles of people in this province. The reports are more interested in creating an image of Newfoundland society which corresponds to the self-images of those who have produced those reports. Instead of re-affirming the self-images of many people in this province, the reports just do the opposite. More often than not they have become instruments of social policy which undervalues the self-confidence and self-concepts of people in this province.
On the contrary, cultures of reflective and critical education and internship aspire to build a democratic society and to encourage democratic living. These cultures do not shy away from the radical meaning inherent in the idea of democracy by adopting a cynical set of attitudes which re-inforce the idea that issues related to inequalities - social, political, cultural, economic and gender - are unproblematic, and therefore, need not be taken too seriously in education policy formulation and implementation
In addition, cultures of reflective and critical thinking in education encourage continued conversations among all members of society. They encourage unchecked (except for extreme hate speech) freedom of speech and communication in all forms, specifically they encourage previously nonheard and unrecognized voices to be heard and recognized through creating new safe spaces and rights.
Not only this, these cultures encourage all partners involved in the internship process to raise critical questions which challenge the existing status quo or one-dimensional thinking, e.g. schools should be changed to meet the demands of global economy and nothing else. Instead of seeing downsizing and school closure as the only solutions to problems created by a global economy and technological changes, reflective and critical cultures empower people to think in terms of the possibilities of creating new forms of communities, sets of relationships and desired goals.
The Need for Systemic Thinking
In order to understand these three cultures in a meaningful
way, we
need to resort to systemic thinking as a perspective. Through this perspective
we can attempt to comprehend institutional and organizational contexts
of the three cultures of the internship discussed above. A series of questions
can be raised in achieving this goal. For example, we can start by asking
the following questions:
As we all know, the internship process in this province has undergone a fundamental change. Dennis Treslan has presented the historical account of this transition in his article in an earlier issue of The Morning Watch.
The new model of the internship which has emerged in this province is called the Partnership Model of the internship. Andrea Rose discusses some of the characteristics of this model as they relate to reflective and to critical perspective in teacher internship.
My point is that we know very little of this new model. Therefore, we need to learn more about this partnership model through research and candid observations. We will be better served if we produce "local knowledge" about this model. In order to achieve this, cooperating teachers, internship supervisors and school personnel ought to make their observations of the internship process public. This they can do either through presenting their ideas at conferences, in-service programs or through writing in journals.
In addition, we should know the following:
For example, what do we publicly know:
Linking the Three Cultures: A Proposal
We can build an effective internship process in this province by linking various cultures - cultures of partnership, cultures of collaboration and cultures of reflective and critical internship. This can be done through team building. If done properly, a team building process will create "locally" produced "cultures of teacher internship." This internship culture will enable us to produce an educated person in our province, as articulated in many recent reports on education reform published in this province. Some points made in those reports were discussed in this paper for the purpose of making this proposal.
A huge amount of research exists in the area of building teams. We have reviewed selected studies relevant to constructing a reflective and critical internship through team building in our article which was published in a previous issue of The Morning Watch.
Basically, as we all know, you cannot make people work together by just putting them together in a group. Team building requires systemic thinking and doing. Team building should be based on the experience of people who have tried to build various types of teams in the process of their professional work, as well as on the research done in this area.
In the final analysis, I believe we desperately need to be talking with each other endlessly about whatever we desire to do in our province. Patience, tolerance and an evolutionary perspective on change should be the central focus when we converse with each other. And we must always remember that it is mostly through conversations that we learn how to live together, how to build democratic communities, positive self-concept and caring relationship.
Doyle, C., Kennedy, W., Ludlow, K., Rose, A. and Singh, A. (1994). Toward building an effective and critical internship program (the QCIP Model): Theory and practice. St. John's: Faculty of Education, Memorial University.
Dundas, K. (1997/98). The construction of school curriculum and music education. The Master of Education Thesis. St. John's: Faculty of Education, Memorial University.
Singh, A., Rose, A., Doyle C. and Kennedy, W. (1996). Collaborative research and the voices of seconded teachers as internship supervisors. The Morning Watch, Vol. 23, # 3-4, Winter, pp. 65-79.
Treslan, D. (1997). The teaching internship at Memorial University. A university-school district partnership. The Morning Watch, Vol. 25, # 1-2, Fall (electronic issue). http://www.mun.ca/edu/faculty/mwatch/current.htm