Internship in the impasse of the duality of theory and practice: representation, imitation, compatibility, and tension in the university-industry relationship

ABSTRACT

Internship is one of the higher education approaches to meeting society’s expectations about the skills and competencies of the graduates. Typically, what is practiced in organizations and industries as internship, more than anything reflects a fundamentalist concept in which the duality of theory and practice is taken for granted. Through a post-qualitative analysis informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s ontologies, this article offers a new conceptual approach to internship and the transition university-to-workplace program. In this article, through three internship scenarios and the circumstances within them, we have identified the structures and discourses that show the consequences of conducting internships according to the fundamentalist approach. Informed by Deleuze and Guattari’s ontologies and through disrupting the theory and practice dichotomy, we offer a new concept for internship and transition from higher education to the workplace that is creative, pluralistic, and multifaceted.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• internship
• university-industry relationship
• Deleuze and Guattari
• rhizome
• theory into practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).