The teaching internship: conciliating thesis development with classroom practice

Abstract

The teaching internship is required of graduate students who participate in the Capes Social Demand Scholarship Program. The internship seeks to improve the student’s teaching skills, but at times it is perceived as an obstacle to the completion of his or her graduate research. Thus, the authors contend that the Capes teaching internship should be understood in terms of three key dimensions: (a) the learning of the students who are taught by the graduate intern; (b) the learning of the graduate intern; (c) the relationship between the experience in the classroom and the development of the intern’s graduate research. Such an understanding should help make the required activity useful not only for the purpose of teacher preparation, but also for the development of the future researcher. To illustrate their argument, the authors relate an experience in which a doctoral student, as part of her Capes teaching internship, applied within an undergraduate classroom setting a concept - meta-evaluation - on which her thesis research is methodologically based.