Attitudes of Iranian Teachers and Students towards Internship

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to identify problems of internship course (teacher training) in teacher training centers and to provide appropriate solutions for eliminating the problems and improving the quality of internship courses in order to prepare student teachers to obtain qualifications for teaching job. In a qualitative-quantitative one-group research design, the data were collected via internship problems questionnaire. In effect, the questionnaire was categorized into four groups of pedagogical, attitudinal, structural and physical problems. The participants were selected based on whole-sampling. Data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively using the descriptive statistics such as frequency statistics. The findings showed that the most significant problems of internship courses were cooperating teachers' lack of using technology-based teaching materials as well as having little knowledge in education theories, developmental psychology and learning theories, and not using new and innovative teaching methodologies (pedagogical), lack of opportunity for cooperating teachers to talk with student teachers about their teaching methodologies and attempt to tackle their potential problems as well as supervisors' lack of provision of a teaching sample for student teachers (attitudinal), training in urban schools (structural), and lack of appropriate physical space for implementing new teaching methodologies (physical).