What Internship Experiences Support Principal-Candidate Learning?
Bellamy, G. Thomas; Nordengren, Chase; Portin, Bradley S.; and Hopkins, Pam.
In University Council for Educational Administration Annual Convention
Purpose and Rationale: School-based internships are typically rated by principal candidates among the most helpful aspects of their preparation programs, but often also considered the least well developed. Despite some consensus about important features of the internship, the field lacks significant empirically supported knowledge about specific practical experiences and performance contexts that support candidate learning in their internship assignments. Working within skill-based conceptions of leadership, which assume that critical capabilities can be learned, researchers outside of education address similar questions under the broad topic of job- based leadership development and leadership self-development. This paper integrates literature from this job-based leadership development research tradition with previous studies of principal internships to frame a set of questions and propose methods for in-depth research on the responsibilities, contexts, and supports associated with principal internships and related school- based leadership development Methods and Data Sources: Four consecutive cohorts of candidates (48 students) in the University of Washington Bothell’s principal preparation program completed a questionnaire at the conclusion of their program. The questionnaire asked candidates to identify specific responsibilities in their internship that were particularly important in contributing to their leadership development and a set of responsibilities that were less helpful. Candidates were then asked to select one responsibility from each list and answer a set of questions related to that responsibility. Questions were adapted from existing measures of job-based leadership challenges, with additional project-developed questions about relationship to the academic program Findings: Quantitative data suggests strong positive relationships between the developmental value of an experience and degree of both challenge and feedback. Qualitative data analysis focuses on the characteristics of responsibilities identified as more and less developmental by candidates, providing both validation and caveats for familiar recommendations about the content of internship assignments. Conclusions: Much current discussion of internship activities focuses on whether intern assignments are authentically related to principal leadership, rather than more routine managerial tasks. Our research suggests a more nuanced view of what activities support leadership development. While content of the activity is important, emerging leaders also identify other aspects of activities as important to their learning, including the level of challenge the activity provides for the individual and the extent to which feedback is available.