Avoiding the Gap of College Students’ Internship Expectations and Perceptions—A Case Study in Taiwan

Abstract

Internship is believed to be vital in bridging the gap of theory and practice because of its providing students many realities they couldn't find on campus. In fact, successful internships can play the role of "win-win-win" triangular partnership among schools, students, and industries, especially to benefit students to well equip themselves for good opportunities in the future career development. However, internship experiences that fail to meet students' expectation may also discourage them or turn them away from entering the industry. Hence, to be aware of and to avoid the potential gap of students' expectation cannot be underestimated. The study aimed to explore students' expectation of internships from an aspect of gender and multiple intelligences expecting to avoid the potential gap beforehand. Subjects were eighty college Hospitality students who were ready to conduct their internships out of campus. They helped to fill out the questionnaires dealing with their personal demographic information, multiple intelligences, and expectations of internship. Findings revealed that genders and multiple intelligences did make a difference in students' expectations of internship which may bring about frustration or disappointment in their real internship world. Suggestions and implications for the triangular partnership of schools, students, and industries were provided with a better understanding of factors relevant to students' expectations for a more appropriate internship program to avoid the potential gap in advance.

Perception of B. Ed trainees towards internship

“…Despite the fact that instructors are supported, they are not instructed to supplement their students' practical knowledge with conceptual knowledge over the length of the course programme (Anjum,2020). Although internships have many advantages, there are also disadvantages, particularly for students who are not completely aware of the workload, job expectations, and criteria in advance, and who are not prepared to work in real-world scenarios (An Hou, 2018). Obtaining student input and developing a body of data that can be used to assist those responsible for principal internship material in order to offer acceptable learning experiences for interns in principle preparation programmes are both critical tasks (Nicks, Thibodeaux and Martin,2018).…”