Industry placements in journalism education: Exploring enhanced learning and professional growth for...

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Industry placements in journalism education: Exploring enhanced learning

and professional growth for interns

Dr. Susan Forde

Griffith Centre for Cultural Research Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

[email protected] Professor Michael Meadows

Griffith Centre for Cultural Research Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

[email protected]

Abstract

A considerable number of internship placements are facilitated by journalism programs globally with limited systematic investigation of their effectiveness as a learning tool. It is generally accepted that any professionally-‐oriented university degree program — such as journalism, nursing, teaching, physiotherapy etc — should involve some level of workplace engagement. There is anecdotal evidence of the positive impact of such placements but no clear understanding of the impact of “work integrated learning”, as it is known in Australia, particularly in journalism education, and how it contributes to broader student learning outcomes. This article draws from the first Australian-‐based study to investigate the dimensions of student workplace learning that flow from journalism internships and their relationship, if any, with university journalism education. It explores how industry internships help students to learn about journalism practices, the media industries involved, and perhaps most importantly, themselves. It considers the internship experiences of graduating journalism students through a combination of approaches — a peer reflective session or focus group with student interns and interviews with selected media industry internship providers. The data suggest that student learning through the internship placement scheme takes place at several levels: through workplace variability; students’ diverse internship experiences; and participation in a post-‐internship peer reflective session. The evidence suggests that journalism internship programs need to enable a broad repertoire of “workplace genre” skills in curricula that is designed and enacted in accord with sound pedagogic principles.

Introduction

A calling is also of necessity an organising principle for information and ideas; for knowledge and intellectual growth (Dewey, 1916, p. 309).

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American social commentator and philosopher John Dewey once argued that the

only adequate training for occupations was by engaging in the occupations themselves.

His view was that knowledge arises from “an active adaptation of the human organism

to its environment” (Field, 2005). And while many since have built on this approach in

advocating the advantages of the workplace as a site for learning, his words at the start

of this article somehow seem to encompass it all. Industry internships play an

increasingly central role in training graduates in a range of disciplines, including

journalism. But despite the widespread adoption of an internship model by journalism

programs globally, particularly in the past 10 years, there are surprisingly few

systematic studies that have evaluated their impact as an effective teaching and learning

approach for future journalists. Apart from largely anecdotal stories recounted by

participants, what do we really know about such experiences?

The Australian higher education sector is not alone in recognising the

importance of “integrating students’ learning experiences across academic and practice

settings” (Billett, 2010, p. 7). The adoption of “work integrated learning”, as it is known

in Australia, is related to an increase in popularity of university programs with an

occupational focus — including journalism. This trend towards incorporating

workplace learning into tertiary studies internationally is evident in the emergence of

the so-‐called “foundation degrees” in the UK and in elements of the German “vocational

academies” (Dessinger, 2006; Billett, 2010, pp. 7-‐8). Workplace learning has different

meanings for different people and varies across disciplines, locations and cultures —

encompassing descriptions such as “practicums”, “clinical placements”, “industry

placements” etc.

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Demand for the expansion of such programs has not necessarily been

accompanied by evaluations of their effectiveness as a learning tool and this is

especially the case with journalism education. Fortunately, we are able to draw on the

experiences of other disciplines where at least some investigation of the nature of

workplace learning has been undertaken. We suggest that much existing knowledge

about the role and effectiveness of industry internships — however they are defined —

is relevant to consider when exploring the nature and effectiveness of students working

in various media environments as part of their degree programs.

It is clear from the literature that different kinds of learning occur in different

settings — in this case, academic and workplace environments. And for Billett (2010, p.

13) this suggests that “because academic and practice settings afford students quite

different kinds of activities and interactions, particular kinds of learning can potentially

arise from experiences with both settings”. Significantly, he concludes that there is little

evidence to suggest that the academy is the sole arbiter of the facts, concepts and

propositions that comprise conceptual knowledge. What is starting to emerge from the

handful of studies of journalism internships as a teaching and learning tool is that the

process involves much more than simply placing students in a workplace situation and

hoping for the best.

A key theoretical basis for our study is that learning needs to be understood as a

process of “relational interdependence” — an interaction of “affordances” and

“engagement”. “Affordances” are the degree to which an individual is invited to

participate in particular activities while “engagement” represents the degree to which

individuals elect to participate (Billett, 2006; 2008). What is it that students actually

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learn during their time spent working in newsrooms or in other sites of journalistic

activity? How effective are these experiences in contributing to the learning process?

This article is drawn from a larger, two-‐year study funded by the Australian

Learning and Teaching Council which explored curriculum and pedagogic bases for

effectively integrating practice-‐based experiences at tertiary level. The study included

18 discipline areas and involved six Australian tertiary institutions, including our own,

Griffith University in Brisbane (Billett, 2010). Our project was one of two in the study

which focussed specifically on journalism internships, seeking to evaluate what

students learned from their “real world” experiences in newsrooms and other

production sites. In addition, we set out to explore the relationships between students’

academic and workplace learning experiences: was our own approach to curriculum

design enhancing or inhibiting their on-‐the-‐job learning opportunities?

This study offered an important opportunity to not only provide practical detail

about the internships themselves, but also to put into an educational context the ways

in which internships contribute to student learning at a number of levels. We

considered the impact of assessment practices; the relevance of course content;

preparing students for their placements; and perhaps most importantly, how industry

internships enabled students to learn about themselves in relation to the shifting

occupational and organisational manifestations of professionalism that define

journalism and journalism education (Deuze, 2005; 2006; Mensing, 2010; Forde, 2011).

An added dimension to our study included a critical evaluation of our internship

program by industry participants who viewed it as much more than a way of improving

graduates’ employability. Despite employment success being an institutionally

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dominant, expected outcome of a vocationally-‐orientated program such as journalism,

the framework which helped to shape our study is very much based in the pedagogy of

work-‐integrated learning which sees the instinctive integration of theory and practice-‐

based learning (Keating et al, 2010, p. 7; Billett, 2001).

Background: Learning in the workplace

As we suggested earlier, the scholarly literature dealing with journalism

internship and student learning is scarce. The only prior Australian study by Bowman

and Lund (2007) investigated the learning experiences offered by a “laboratory without

walls”, a university-‐based program that enables journalism students in Brisbane to

produce industry-‐standard news and current affairs stories, working alongside industry

professionals. Coupled with data from student industry placements, their analysis

identified positive employment outcomes and a high level of industry-‐readiness by their

participating interns (2007, pp. 5-‐7). In a similar vein, a United States study — focussing

primarily on the various elements of the internship program under investigation rather

than on students’ reflections on their experiences — concluded that the program

contributed to student learning by meeting assessment plan goals (Williams, 2008).

The paucity of any systematic study of journalism internships in relation to

student learning in the scholarly literature compelled us to turn to other disciplines and

studies for assistance. The internship model as an approach to learning has been around

for perhaps as long as many occupations themselves: consider law, nursing,

engineering, medicine, teaching, for example. As we have already suggested,

conceptions of journalism itself (and by association, journalism education) remain

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necessarily fluid in the rapidly-‐changing social, political, cultural and technological

environments with which all of us must engage, whether at the level of mainstream or

alternative media sectors (Deuze, Bruns and Neuberger, 2007; Forde, Foxwell and

Meadows, 2009; Organisation for Economic Co-‐operation and Development, 2010;

Purcell et al 2010; Forde, 2011). Graduates from vocational academies in Germany

where internships are offered across a range of programs — including engineering and

banking — are ranked highly by employers in terms of their motivation and

performance. Interestingly, students who undertake internships as part of this tier of

higher education in Germany tend to identify with the “profession” or “occupation” —

termed elsewhere “vocational identity” (Virtanen, Tynjala, and Stenstrom, 2008) —

rather than the organisation for which they work (Dessinger, 2006, p. 621). This

suggests a deeper, more critical engagement with their learning experiences rather than

seeing an internship as simply a pathway to employment. It accords with Billett’s (2010,

p. 13) summation that the development of forms of knowledge relevant to particular

occupations are not restricted to what is being taught in an academic setting:

Indeed, it is the repertoire of experiences that individuals enjoy through

engaging in practice settings that leads to rich associations between ideas that

are central to higher order conceptual knowledge of the kinds required for

effective performance in work tasks.

The extent to which interns “learn” from their industry experience and their

ability to reflect and build upon it is dependent on a number of factors which may be

external to the efforts of journalism educators. Billett points out that individuals are

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“active in construing and constructing knowledge (i.e. learning) [that] arises in

personally particular ways” and therefore (2009c, p. 2)…

…students will bring particular kinds of understandings to their learning in both

academic and practice settings. It is these understandings that shape how and

what they will learn in both settings, and then integrate them.

This kind of “personal meaning-‐making” is a dynamic process that involves “the

self, reflection and experience” and the context in which such varied learning takes

place is crucial (Merriam and Heuer, 2006, p. 254). Eakins’ Australian study of

marketing interns reveals the importance of a strong “partnership and communication”

between stakeholders: educational institutions, students and employers. She stresses

the importance of communication in identifying and making explicit the skills acquired

by students and the problems involved in their particular learning situations (2000, p.

66). The need for encouraging such “active learning” through the use of reflection,

analysis and discussion is highlighted in an extensive study of criminal justice

internship programs in the United States (Stichman and Farkas, 2007, p. 164).

Another key theme which emerged from the literature was the importance of

preparing students for their industry placements. Schneider and Andre (2005) explored

student perceptions of learning in three different disciplines — management, political

science, and communication studies — concluding that university classroom activities

play a critical role in preparing students for their expected workplace activity, in this

case, writing. They argue that such preparation in “workplace genres” gives students

“solid grounding in the procedural skills of research and analysis integral to certain

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genres” (2005, p. 215). Another study of student perceptions, albeit involving European

culinary internships, confirms that while experiential learning must be relevant to

students’ needs in life, it is enhanced only where there are clear objectives for an

internship negotiated by all participants, including students (Cullen, 2010, p. 104).

The need for students to make explicit their learning achievements is another

key element which emerges from prior studies of workplace learning. This places a

particular onus on education institutions, as Leinhardt, McCarthy Young and Merriman

(1995, p. 408) suggest:

The university should arrange for its students to systematically reflect on

multiple episodes of practice in order to examine varied practice components in

varied ways (observation, prediction etc). By doing so, the university arms its

students with flexible generative understanding of theory in practice, and tools

for analysing, revising, and improving practice.

As part of the large Australia-‐wide study in which our project was based, Benson

(2010) explored aspects of journalism internships offered through Melbourne-‐based La

Trobe University’s communications and arts program. His interest, like ours, also

included the “type and extent of learning experienced through an industry placement”.

He explored what students learned about their own abilities, problem-‐solving skills

(and simply, themselves) through a lengthy individual “debrief” carried out with interns

on completion of their placement. He concluded that by using this approach as a form of

“action research...the self as the astute reflective researcher of one’s own life

experiences and social contexts”, it enhances student learning by encouraging them to

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develop a method of “genuine reflection, engagement and dialogue about the self”

(Benson, 2010, p. 68). Indeed, he notes his own transition from academic to “almost

being a life coach” in guiding students through their internship experiences in this

intense and time-‐consuming process (2010, p. 72). This extended role for tertiary-‐based

educators — reported anecdotally elsewhere — seems to form an integral part of the

personal development that can occur through involvement in the internship process. It

is something we have experienced ourselves and by itself, it is perhaps worthy of

further consideration as an integral part of the work-‐integrated learning experience.

Benson’s experiences and interventions underline that the position occupied by

educational institutions remains varied and challenging.

The role for the academy starts with an assumption that the actual tasks of

practice are complex and dynamic, and a stance that, while deeply respectful of

that complexity, is not overly romantic about it. This role involves approaching

the tensions between theory and practice as worthwhile locations for reflection

and opportunities for integration of knowledge (Leinhardt, McCarthy Young and

Merriman, 1995, p. 408).

Our approach in this article necessarily draws on theoretical ideas which support

the need for academic intervention before, during and after such practice-‐based

experiences. Because of the diversity of internships undertaken by the journalism

students in our study, it also offers some indications of the extent, duration and range of

experiences that may be required before students are able to effectively adapt to

different workplace settings. Furthermore, enabling students to undertake a diversity of

internship experiences may also assist them to identify the types of journalism they

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wish to undertake — and indeed, those to which they as individuals may be most suited

— along with the type of organisation they seek to work with upon graduation. The

social consequences flowing from a potential misalignment of graduate skills and

employment destinations were highlighted by Dewey, almost 100 years ago, and yet

still seem as relevant today:

An occupation is the only thing that which balances the distinctive capacity of an

individual with his [sic] social services. To find out what one is fitted to do and to

secure an opportunity to do it is the key to happiness. Nothing is more tragic

than failure to discover one’s true business in life or to find that one has drifted

or been forced by circumstances into an uncongenial calling (1916, p. 308).

Methodology

In order to explore these dimensions of journalism internships, we developed a

series of evaluative procedures which draw on a range of assessment models. We

applied a broad grounded theory approach to data analysis, in essence, letting the data

shape our theoretical findings (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). We were particularly

concerned with evaluating the usefulness of a “peer reflective session” as a learning tool

for students. This session has much in common with what has been described

elsewhere as a “cooperative seminar” (Grubb and Badway, 1998) — a key device used

in cooperative education and one which encourages understanding of theory in practice

(Leinhardt, McCarthy Young and Merriman, 1995; Smollins, 1999). Based on Grubb and

Badway’s “eight educational goals” for cooperative seminars, and using a focus group

discussion method, we facilitated peer reflective sessions involving journalism

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internship students who had completed their industry placements. This process

prompted the interns to think about issues such as the meaning of day-‐to-‐day

occurrences experienced during their placements; applying broad theoretical concepts

to their recent industry experiences; reflecting on the relationship between themselves,

their workplaces, and society generally; and evaluating and understanding career

decisions as they have evolved from their own experiences (Grubb and Badway, 1998).

In addition to this peer reflective session, we sought to discover how the use of industry

supervisors’ evaluations and feedback might enhance students’ understanding of their

skills and of their own industry-‐readiness or “personal meaning-‐making” (Merriam and

Heuer, 2006). Student reflection came through both the peer discussion and an

associated reflective essay.

We applied two complementary methodologies to elicit data for this project — a

recorded peer reflective session involving interns and a series of one-‐on-‐one semi-‐

structured interviews with a representative sample of their workplace supervisors. The

peer reflective sessions, which typically involved 8-‐12 final (3rd) year journalism

students who had completed their internships, enabled them to critically reflect on their

experiences, to share them with other students, and to begin evaluating them within the

context of prior university learning. As Billett argues (2009c, p. 2):

In curriculum terms there is a need to consider, sequence and work to maximise

the learning outcomes of both kinds of settings, and also provide experiences for

students to share these experiences and try to effect inter-‐subjectivity or shared

understanding. Pedagogically, there is a need to provide experiences for sharing

and articulating experiences.

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The reflective sessions were recorded and transcribed to enable us to elicit

themes and specific comments by students about their experiences. We recorded two

such sessions, one in 2009 and another in 2010 involving comparable numbers of

students and canvassing similar issues. Importantly, each session was a pre-‐cursor to an

assessment item — a reflective essay — which required students to compare their

personal workplace experiences with broader and more theoretical notions of

journalistic practice. In both the sessions and the follow-‐up critical essays, students

were encouraged to compare the different types of internships in which they

participated; to think about the learning and personal development they experienced at

different workplaces; and to identify sectors of the media industry where they might

best be suited.

The feedback provided by workplace supervisors through a simple two-‐page

feedback form completed at the end of each internship formed the basis for follow-‐up

semi-‐structured interviews with six industry personnel covering the range of

internships undertaken by students in online, radio, television, newspapers and

magazine journalism. Interviews were semi-‐structured with a series of five or six

general questions or themes and varied in length from 20 to 45 minutes. The interviews

were recorded and transcribed for analysis. We were eager not only to discover how

our students had fared in workplace environments but also to gauge industry responses

to the pedagogical issues surrounding internships — particularly, how effectively our

university journalism education curriculum afforded our students the opportunity to

engage in learning (Billett, 2006; 2008). The two-‐page industry supervisor feedback

form invited them to comment on students’ abilities to problem-‐solve, to acquit

themselves in difficult or challenging situations, and to assess broader skills associated

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with a particular “workplace genre” such as radio, or television or print or in a multi-‐

platform media production environment (Schneider and Andre, 2005).

Findings

Four significant elements of workplace learning emerged from analysis of the

peer reflective sessions and interviews: workplace variability; internship diversity; peer

learning; and industry interactions.

Workplace variability

Workdplace variability emerged primarily from analysis of the peer reflective

sessions. It refers to the undeniable fact that one intern’s version of the perfect

internship may be another intern’s week (or fortnight) from hell. Different factors

impact on that experience, notably individual interns and/or the various industry-‐based

staff they may encounter. Essentially, it stems from students being able to hear, from

their peers, very different interpretations of workplace experiences from the same

and/or different news organisations. For example, where students described their

experiences with one metropolitan newspaper variously as “fantastic” or a place they

“loved”, others learned that the organisation sometimes applied a problematic

interpretation of journalism ethics — in direct contrast to university journalism course

teachings — and even, in one case, elements of racism. Other dimensions which

emerged included personality clashes: one student experienced conflict with a TV news

camera operator on her first day, describing the experience to her peers (Peer

Reflective Session, 2009):

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I didn’t want to come back the next day but I was like, “I’m here for a reason; I’m

going to do this!” And what do you know? The whole newsroom found out and I

actually gained a lot of respect from them because everyone else hated him and I

was the one who put him in his place. So I actually had some of the journos

actually ask me to go out with them, which was good. So that’s something I

learned: just stand your ground; you’re there for a reason; you’ve just put up

with it and just go about your own business.

Others spoke about striking a particular news editor or chief of staff with little or

no interest in fostering or mentoring interns, leaving them to work on their own. Others

who—for a variety of internal and external reasons—were more ‘integrated’ in to the

workplace reported a simple but important discovery (Peer Reflective Session, 2009):

One thing that I did learn is that as a journalist, it’s not really a 9 to 5 job. When I

was at the Courier-‐Mail, I was there, like, the first day: you’re here from 9 to 5.

But often, I would have stories that would still keep running and I would be there

until about 6.30, 6.45 at night. So, that’s just one thing I really learned: you are

there to get your stories done no matter if you said, “You start this time; you

finish this time.” You’re going to get it done. That’s one thing I really picked up.

Other variables identified by students include different experiences in the same

newsroom triggered by particular news events or a lack thereof (Bowen, 2010;

Clouston, 2010). As Ten News unit director Felicity Clouston (2010) observed:

The industry is very fluid; you have to be very flexible, I think, working in a

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newsroom or any sort of journalistic job probably, but a broadcast newsroom

particularly. Things happen at last minute and you have to be able to adapt.

Interestingly, negative experiences reported by almost all students were most often

interpreted as a positive learning experience: either convincing a student that they were

not interested in a particular news genre, or by revealing to them a window on the “real

world” of journalism practice. Our initial assessment of this element of the learning

process suggests the following:

• a two-‐hour pre-‐internship preparation session was a key element in ensuring

students knew what to expect when they undertook a placement (Schneider and

Andre 2005). This included briefing them on how to act, how to dress, their

expected attitude, all contributing to increasing the chance that their internship

learning outcomes would be positive, regardless of (and perhaps because of)

their individual experiences;

• the size of the organisation offering an internship placement seemed to play a

role for some students: for those who were more apprehensive or shy, smaller

news organisations led to more positive internship experiences as students felt

wanted/needed and were less likely to feel overwhelmed;

• some of the factors which led to negative experiences are out of our control —

for example, particular personnel in charge of newsrooms when interns started

or busy news days when interns might be ignored etc; and

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• the importance of selecting the right students for a particular organizational

placement. Some organisations (Bowen, 2010; Clouston, 2010) specifically

request the “best” students and will not accept those who are not in their final

year of a journalism course. The onus rests very much with internship placement

staff (academics) to ensure a “good match” between particular students and a

particular organisation.

Internship diversity

A second key element to emerge from our analysis concerns students’ learning

based on their ability to compare internship experiences through a range of different

organisational placements. In most cases here, students undertook multiple internships

(either two or three) at different organisations. This enabled them to learn through a

comparison of management and personnel styles and to assess how well they were able

to fit into each. One student (Peer Reflective Session 2009) made this observation

following her placement with an Indigenous radio station:

It was really good just to get a perspective on Indigenous issues and do stories

which are positive for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I thoroughly

enjoyed that; that was really good.

Another student, who worked in TV newsrooms in Brisbane and the Philippines,

recounted different experiences (Peer Reflective Session 2009):

I basically ended up getting videotapes and finding my own work to do, cutting

up stories, writing my own stories but that was probably the main reason I hated

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it. It was just an environment that was very sterile. My internship overseas?

Absolutely loved it; everyone was very accommodating. You got to go out with

journalists almost every day and cover really different issues compared to here

… I learned a lot more there.

Adaptability is one of the key “professional” traits identified by industry

personnel, as Clouston (2010) suggests:

From our point of view, we are dealing with television journalism so I think they

realize that each different medium you go to, you have to actually be able to

adapt to a different type of writing … So, I think they learn a different style

depending on which area they go and do their internship in … And these are little

things that, as a student they need to learn and work on themselves as well

The benefits that flow from this process seemed to be on several levels: enabling

students to learn more about their own levels of personal development or confidence

and, perhaps more importantly, facilitatating their ability to develop clearer career

goals and aims (Merriam and Heuer 2006). This learned awareness is an important

experience for students, most of whom were less than six months away from

graduating.

Peer learning

The post-‐internship peer reflective session emerged as a critical learning

moment for those who participated, not only because it gave each a chance to voice

their experiences, but also because it gave them the opportunity to engage with others’

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experiences. Based on the dynamics of focus group research where interactivity

between individuals creates something quite different from individuals’ separate

experiences, the peer reflective session in many ways enables students’ experiences to

create a rich and varied learning environment (Kitzinger and Barbour, 1999;

MacNaughten and Meyers, 2005). The learning that stemmed from this process was

complex yet central to students’ understanding of their role as journalists: at one level it

enabled interns to put their experiences into a broader, pedagogical context and to

connect their practical experiences with theoretical and university-‐based experiential

learning (Leinhardt, McCarthy Young and Merriman, 1995; Billett, 2010); on another

more practical level, it enabled students to learn something about an internship

placement that they had not been able to experience personally. The impact of peer

learning in such a session seemed to be highly significant with students engaging with

the ideas raised spontaneously, honestly and with conviction. There was strong

reinforcement throughout sessions that each student intern had been able to

successfully undertake “professional-‐level” activities as judged by industry experts —

their potential employers. The clear articulations of self-‐confidence — even through

negative experiences — suggested students learned to adopt problem-‐solving

techniques appropriate for their chosen professional vocation, as the following

examples indicate (Peer Reflective Session, 2009):

… internships certainly boost your confidence level, like when you sit there and

work. They really boost your confidence: “You can do this!”

I definitely learnt that I’m a lot stronger than I thought. I think I knew that I

probably did have the abilities; it’s just believing in yourself. So when you first let

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go of that shyness, figure out that you can do it and then, I think, you sort of learn

to, having a good attitude and wanting to be there and proving that you want to

be there really helps, and just making yourself known.

It’s a bit scary when you walk in there but straight away, they were very

welcoming and I think you have to just go and say hello to everybody. I just made

sure I went and introduced myself to everybody and yeah, I think if you show

you are not scared to go and introduce yourself, they are quite welcoming. They

can see that you’re not, you feel that you have the right to be there.

Students who participated in the 2010 peer reflective session reported that

negative internship experiences had helped their own understanding of their place in

the industry (i.e. where they did not want to work again); and facilitated some self-‐

realisation about their own limitations. One student reported that she always wanted to

be a daily newspaper journalist – until she completed her internship at the national

daily newspaper, The Australian. The pace, pressure and “roughness” of the daily

routine was too much — she reported arriving home every evening with a “massive

headache”, and waking each morning with a feeling of dread knowing she had to head

straight back into it. In this instance, while the internship experience was negative, the

learning was substantial and in many ways, very positive — she learned what type of

journalist she wanted to be, what her limitations were personally and then began a

process of matching up what she had learned with her future workplace options.

Industry interactions

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Interviews with six news industry representatives provided another perspective

on the existing internship placement program. Most interviewees expressed their

strong support for an analysis of the current system to both refine it and to strengthen

the existing relationships between industry and academia (Bowen, 2010; Budge, 2010;

Clouston, 2010; Vyner, 2010). This clearly has important ramifications for curriculum

design and pedagogy. For example, broadcast industry participants from ABC News and

Ten News in Brisbane underlined the importance of graduates’ ability to have specific

skills for a particular “workplace genre” (Schneider and Andre, 2005; Bowen, 2010;

Clouston, 2010). It suggests the importance of retaining or even strengthening such

skills in the curriculum while at the same time refining the associated pedagogy to

maintain crucial links between theory and practice. The links between industry

expectations and curriculum are critical, as Clouston (2010) suggests:

I think internships give them a very real sense of what the job is actually like. A

lot of them actually learn more on the job then they do actually for the uni

course. I know that’s necessarily a good thing to say but I’m sort of giving you an

honest view here…

The academic-‐industry relationship in journalism education is a crucial element

in the development of curriculum: internship providers’ comments on the

appropriateness of students’ skills and knowledge are also able to highlight future

directions we can begin to incorporate into curriculum design. This includes attention

to such criteria as attitude and demeanour — perhaps normally associated with a basic

vocational outcome but nonetheless of crucial importance to employers. This, of course,

varies from intern to intern, as Vyner (2010) observes:

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Confidence-‐wise, some of the students were very shy and just about all of the

feedback reports that I gave, I suggested that they do, either take up a course in

debating or speaking or a Toastmasters course, something like that that will get

them used to speaking in front of people which will also get them used to

speaking one on one with people even, and not being shy.

ABC State News Director Bernard Bowen (2010) reinforced this expectation:

What you look for as an EP (executive producer) or a producer is, you’re looking at

their attitude: if someone is prepared to work the phones; or if someone is prepared

to listen to advice; or to have a go; or to come to the chief-‐of-‐staff or the EP with

story ideas. You get to see what an intern is like and that is an invaluable thing

which you can’t get from an application on a piece of paper.

While broadcast industry internship providers did place emphasis on interns

showing confidence with particular “workplace genre” skills, equally there are

expectations of generic problem-‐solving skills, initiative and outward levels of

confidence and professionalism. Indeed, if a workplace supervisor felt an intern did not

have enough confidence or professional “front” to conduct interviews on behalf of the

organisation or to undertake communications with senior managers, sources or clients,

then they were often rated poorly as interns. Similarly, low-‐level news writing skills and

poor news judgement predictably also led to poor ratings for the interns — but the data

from the workplace supervisors suggest that both of these elements are important

components of workplace expertise.

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Conclusion

The data gathering we undertook to complete this curriculum and pedagogical

evaluation of our internship program caused us to formalise the interns’ reflections on

their internship experiences, but it has had a similar effect on us. There are myriad

issues that have emerged from this fieldwork which have raised questions about the

most efficient way of enhancing student learning while also providing benefit to

workplace providers who support the program year after year. The learning

experiences of interns can vary considerably in the same internship setting but this is

something that we can control to some extent through detailed preparation of interns

(Schneider and Andre, 2005). There are many other factors at play — personalities, life

experiences, maturity, and independence, for example — which we cannot control,

along with the personnel and events interns will encounter on site. Offering students a

diversity of internships is clearly beneficial in affording them the opportunities to

engage at multiple levels in the “relational interdependence” that characterises

workplace learning (Billett, 2006; 2008). It also helps to clarify students’ career

decisions. The peer reflective component offered an important pedagogical opportunity

for students to reflect on and articulate their experiences, to share them with others and

to learn from the overall process. It enabled students to think beyond a description of

the work undertaken and to critically evaluate and reflect on their experiences,

observations, conversations and interactions with industry workers (Leinhardt,

McCarthy Young and Merriman, 1995; Billett, 2009c).

Formal evaluation of student learning through internship courses is currently

little researched nor understood within journalism education. In more established

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disciplines such as teaching and nursing, evaluation and understanding of the learning

processes involved is more advanced and there is much to be gained by journalism

educators in engaging with this knowledge. The findings of this project suggest that

there is much to be done beyond simply determining if what we are teaching students is

really what industry wants — we need to know more than simply that our students are

“industry-‐ready” in terms of their journalistic skills. Media industry expectations

assume a high level of competency in “workplace genre” skills which include practical

expertise alongside students’ development of “self” — personal confidence, initiative,

problem-‐solving, office communication and general cooperativeness and teamwork.

Interactions with media organisations — large and small — provide important feedback

about curriculum design and pedagogy and also point to elements such as the

importance of including this repertoire of skills in our curriculum planning and delivery.

Our study, albeit limited, suggests that journalism internship programs that are

carefully planned and managed according to sound pedagogic principles — evident in

the varied studies of workplace learning experiences elsewhere — seem highly likely to

enhance students’ learning in accord with the expectations of both the academy and

industry.

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