Assessment of Student Internship Programme By 2013/2014 Final Year Students of the Department of Basic Education, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana

The crucial role of internships in teacher education has made a lot of institutions of higher learning like UEW to adopt internship as an important component of their curricula with the view of providing opportunities to the students to gain theoretical and practical experience for their future careers. This study investigated the perception of 2013/2014 final year students of the Department of Basic Education, UEW, Ghana, on the Student Internship Programme (SIP) they undertook in the first semester of the 2013/2014 academic year. The purposive sampling technique was used to select all 209 students for the study. However, 188 students were used for the study because 21 students did not return their questionnaire. The findings revealed that generally, the students were uncertain as to the kind of support they were given by their partnership schools. However, they generally agreed that they gained adequate instructional skills from their mentors to assist them in the “real world”. Even though the students generally disagreed that they experienced challenges, they specifically indicated their agreement that the one semester SIP was inadequate. There was no significant difference in the views of the students on the instructional skills gained in terms of gender and the type of basic school (public or private) internship was undertaken. Among the suggestions is that adequate orientation should be given to students before they embark on the internship programme. Also, the university should ensure that all headteachers and mentors are regularly trained and oriented for the programme.