Attitudes Towards Internship in the B.El.Ed. Curriculum: A Comparison of Arts- and Science-Stream Trainee Teachers

Abstract

School internship provides pre-service teachers with structured opportunities to engage with authentic school and classroom contexts. This study compared attitudes towards internship among Arts- and Science-stream trainees enrolled in the Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.) curriculum. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted with 240 B.El.Ed. trainees from five colleges affiliated with M.J.P. Rohilkhand University, including 182 Arts-stream and 58 Science-stream trainees. Data were collected using a self-developed attitude questionnaire and analysed using an independent-samples t test. The Arts-stream group had a mean score of 102.59 (SD = 13.74), whereas the Science-stream group had a mean score of 98.25 (SD = 14.14). The reported test statistic, t(238) = 2.05, corresponds to a two-sided p value of .041. The mean difference was 4.34 points, with an estimated Cohen's d of approximately 0.31, indicating a small effect. Thus, the Arts-stream group demonstrated a modestly higher mean attitude score towards internship than the Science-stream group. The finding should be interpreted as a small group difference rather than as evidence of equivalence or of differences in teaching competence.