Student’s Perception on the Personal Impact of a Social Education Degree Internship

The functional profile of the social educator is based on the development of theoretical, technical and personal/relational skills, which should guide training courses organization. Assuming the shortcomings of a merely theoretical approach, besides a consistent preparation in theoretical and essential technical contents for socio-educational intervention, practice in context should be favoured as an opportunity to develop professional skills, together with a critical reflection on the functional profile. This study emerges from the need to reflect and rethink the internship, as well as how the respective supervision is developed, of the degree in social education at the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, and it is based on the students’ perceptions about the impact of the internship on personal development. This is a qualitative and exploratory study, using the documentary analysis of 50 final internship reports. From the content analysis, four categories emerged referring to gains in terms of acquiring and managing knowledge, development of technical skills, personal and relational development and reinforcement of professional identity. The importance given to personal and relational development should be noted (41.4% of mentions) taking into account its relevance in constructing a professional identity. Findings on the technical skills and on the increase of profession knowledge, also by mobilising theoretical training, positively reinforce the internship model that is based on a proximity supervision approach and on a dialogical perspective of the professional learning.

Motivation and relationship of the student with the school as factors involved in the perceived learning

Motivation should be seen as a very important factor in the learning process. The motivated student has the inner strength to learn, to discover and capitalize on capabilities, to improve academic performance and to adapt to the demands of the school context. Contextual factors like the psychological sense of school membership may be also especially important to students’ classroom engagement, their motivation and learning success. So with this study we intend to examine how the sense of school belonging and intrinsic motivation influences perceived learning.A structural model reveals that the negative sense of school belonging has a negative impact on intrinsic motivation and on perceived learning. In turn, intrinsic motivation positively and significantly influences perceived learning in the course.