Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Their Readiness for the Internship

Abstract

This descriptive qualitative study aims to investigate English student teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to take the internship regarding some aspects. The data were mainly collected through interviews. The interviewees were six students in the sixth semester of ELT program of the State University of Malang. The researcher recruited six student teachers with high, average, and low achievement based on their GPA. The data were analyzed descriptively according to three steps which consist of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. The research showed that the student teachers were still feeling not ready enough in some aspects. The first aspect is almost all of them had an issue with the duration of the internship that is too short. Second, not all the student teachers majoring English Language Teaching have a desire to be a teacher although teaching is the primary field of work that they have been prepared for throughout their university study. Third, another factor that makes them feel unready is anxiety. Fourth, from the content courses aspect, there was an issue with the seq uences of the courses that made student teachers confused in planning a lesson. Lastly, regarding skill courses, the respondents thought the courses are already adequate, and they already got good scores, but they stated that they still have some issues with it(Persepsi Mahasiswa KPL tentang Kesiapan Mereka untuk Menjalani KPL Keguruan)Penelitian deskriptif kualitatif ini bertujuan untuk mencari tahu kesiapan mahasiswa KPL Jurusan Sastra Inggris untuk menjalani KPL Keguruan di beberapa aspek. Data penelitian ini didapatkan melalui wawancara. Subjek yang diwawancai adalah enam mahasiswa semester enam dari Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Negeri Malang. Peneliti merekrut enam mahasiswa KPL dengan prestasi tinggi, sedang, dan rendah berdasarkan IPK. Data penelitian dianalisis berdasarkan tiga tahapan yang terdiri atas reduksi data, penyajian data, dan penarikan simpulan. Penelitian menunjukkan bahwa mahasiswa KPL masih belum siap di beberapa aspek. Aspek pertama adalah hampir semua dari enam mahasiswa KPL memiliki pemikiran bahwa durasi dari KPL Keguruan terlalu singkat. Kedua, tidak semua mahasiswa KPL Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris memiliki minat untuk menjadi guru walaupun mengajar adalah peluang kerja yang dipersiapkan selama belajar di universitas. Ketiga, faktor lain yang membuat mereka tidak siap adalah kegelisahan. Keempat, dari aspek mata kuliah konten terdapat isu tentang urutan mata kuliah yang membuat mahasiswa KPL bingung tentang perencanaan pembelajaran. Terakhir di aspek mata kuliah kecakapakan berbahasa Inggris, responden mengatakan bahwa mata kuliah tersebut sudah cukup membantu dan nilainya sudah mencukupi, tetapi mereka masih memiliki beberapa permasalahan

Discovering the tutors’ perspective on the quality of internship programs in a pandemic context

“…According to this dimension, the survey items show that professors appreciate that the quality of internships results from a series of student actions aimed at applying faculty knowledge in the internship, correlating faculty knowledge with practical aspects of work, and acquiring new knowledge, practical skills, and competencies useful for the future profession, thus increasing their employability. These results are consistent with other studies that show that an internship can improve the employability of students and prepare them for the development of their own careers (To & Lung, 2020;Callanan & Benzing, 2004;Coco, 2000;Odlin et al, 2022;Hora et al, 2019;Teng et al, 2022;Papík et al, 2022;McHugh, 2017), allows students to apply theoretical learning in practice before becoming graduates (Vélez & Giner, 2015;Coco, 2000;Franco et al, 2019) and helps students to acquire knowledge and skills relevant to a future job (Garavan & Murphy, 2001;Chen et al, 2011;Maharani, 2018;Cho, 2006).…”

“…Items specific to this dimension refer to the familiarization of students with the organizational environment, bringing added value and increasing students' self-confidence through internships, stimulating student participation in internships by the university. In this respect, other studies reflect that internship programs help students make connections between academic studies and the business world (Hergert, 2009;Maharani, 2018), better preparing them to start their careers (Hite & Bellizzi, 1986;Liu, 2021;Teng et al, 2022) and have an impact on the professional development and skills of business students, affecting their personal development (Anjum, 2020). On the other hand, research shows that there are positive relationships between students' satisfaction with the internship and their confidence in their own ability to get a full-time job and the usefulness of internships for their future careers (Gupta et al, 2010).…”

“…The items of the questionnaire are developed by the authors based on literature research (Anjum, 2020;Chance, 1991;Franco et al, 2019;Maharani, 2018;Odlin et al, 2022;To & Lung, 2020), focus groups conducted with experts in the field and results adapted from previous research. Most of the questions in the questionnaire are closed-ended, either singlechoice, multiple-choice, or Likert-type on a scale of 1 to 5.…”