Virtual School Internship as a Pedagogy of Disruption: Prospective Teachers’ Virtual Internship Experiences

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic posed considerable challenges to the prevailing school internship in teacher education institutions (TEIs), which had been an integral part of the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) programmes. The school internship is a structured, systematic teaching practice session conducted by prospective teachers in secondary schools. Most TEIs in India were not adequately prepared to conduct virtual internships during the pandemic, as the concept emerged amid uncertainty. Thus, virtual internships emerged due to the impossibility of conducting in-person internships. This case study research is based on Mizoram University. This study aims to identify the hardships faced and efforts made by prospective teachers during a virtual school internship. An online questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions was used to collect qualitative data. Eighty-eight student-teachers were selected using purposive sampling in the study, and their responses were analysed using thematic analysis. Virtual school internship, though born out of crisis, functioned as a disruptive pedagogical space that challenged conventional assumptions about teacher preparation and opened possibilities for reinterpreting internship practices in teacher education.