School Internship Experiences of Two Visually Challenged Student Teachers: A Phenomenological Study

School internship is one of the most important phases of any teacher education programme. This is the stage where the student teachers apply the theoretical knowledge and skills they had acquired from the institute of teacher education in real life situations. School internship can be termed as a litmus test for a student teacher. National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education - NCFTE (2009) envisioned school internship as one of the three major aspects of a teacher education programme. National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) of India revised the course structure of Bachelor of Education (B Ed) and Master of Education (M Ed) degree programmes in the year 2014 by incorporating the major recommendations of NCFTE-2009. However the NCFTE-2009 document as well as the revised course structures of B Ed and M Ed degree programmes did not give much emphasis to the inclusion of the differentially abled student teachers and the ways and means in which they have to be included, even if both the documents gave due emphasis for the inclusion of the differentially children with disabilities at the school level. This paper analyses the school internship experiences of two visually challenged student teachers who completed their B Ed programme from institute of teacher education under Kannur University in Kerala. Phenomenological research design has been adopted for the study. First hand descriptions of the experiences were elicited from the participants through semi structured interviews. The interview data were analysed to derive categories and themes with the help of VanManen's (1990) phenomenological data analysis framework. These themes were combined to explain the school internship experiences of the two visually challenged student teachers. The major themes identified were (i) Lack of freedom, (ii) Limited mentoring, (iii) Adaptive instructional and assessment strategies, (iv) Technological experiences (v) Relationship dynamics. [This paper was published in "Journal of Studies in Teacher Education" v13 n1 p30-45 Jun 2020.]