IMPROVEMENT OF PEDAGOGICAL INTERNSHIP: SOME ASPECTS

Future teacher preparation remains a meaningful field of every country and Lithuania as well. Pedagogical internship, undoubtedly, remains a very significant element of pedagogical study structure and process. Competence, practical experience acquisition, personal improvement and all-round knowledge of educational institution are considered the most important advantages of the internship. This is not only a certain future teacher's self-examination in a real educational environment, but also a proper way to improve. On the other hand, internship organisation is not appropriate enough. A few very important things are obvious: a short pedagogical internship time, coherence with the studies at university, and not sufficiently purposefully defined internship activities (content aspect). Mentors' work should be improved; however, this is not treated as a very important drawback. Also, two improvement spheres have been exposed: internship content/programme improvement (to concretise, optimise, and more clearly regulate the activities) and strengthening interaction effectiveness between university and basic internship schools. Pedagogical internship effectiveness (from the point of view of pedagogical ability consolidation, improvement) remains undoubted. On the other hand, certain requirements should be raised for the institution, in which students would like and could perform pedagogical internship. Educational institution's democracy and openness, technological supply, ecological friendliness/suitability are considered the most essential requirements. The existing pedagogical internship model in Lithuania has to be improved in two main directions – process (internship length increasing, guaranteeing the acquaintance with the variety of pedagogical institutions, interaction with the internship leaders and mentors improvement) and content (activity optimisation, innovativeness, variety increase) improvement.