Research internship (Issue 10, 2009)
International student Gembo Tshering
During his course, Gembo enjoyed having great supervisors, finding new ideas and contributing towards the educational knowledge base. In January 2009, Gembo was selected for the research internship program of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), which enabled him to work for six weeks in paid employment in January, February of this year. Below is Gembo's account of his experience.
One fine day I received an e-mail that invited an expression of interest in working as a research intern at the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) at the Ministry of Education Government of Victoria. Later I learnt that the same e-mail was circulated among several universities in Victoria. As a result, a colleague from Swinburne University of Technology and I were selected for the post of research internship for a six-week period by the DEECD. My colleague and I worked for the DEECD Office for Policy Research and Innovation (OPRI) for six weeks.
Working as a research intern at the OPRI was a good experience for me. Firstly, the internship was very much related to my research interest which is to relate educational policy priorities with research findings. The DEECD has set a number of research priority areas of interest for 2008-11, which is a derivative of its corporate plan and the blueprint.
The research priority areas of interest are designed to provide direction to internal and external researchers on the research interests of the DEECD. Part of the research interests for DEECD is to pursue high quality research and partnerships-locally and internationally. This is an important methodological experience as it shows how a system can be developed that naturally combines research and policy-decisions.
Secondly, in line with the research priority areas of interest of the DEECD, my colleague and I performed national and international environmental scans of research literature ranging from the contributions by the most popular educational theorists and pragmatists, with a special focus on the past, present, and future scenarios of educational developments.
Our engagement on environmental scans of research literature was a unique experience that called for our adaptability, flexibility, and efficiency as we had to switch over from one broad strand to another broad strand of the corporate blueprint. For example, switching over from ‘system improvement’, ‘partnerships with parents and communities’, and ‘workforce reform’ was indeed an enriching experience.
Thirdly, in the course of my internship, I realised how the government machineries meet the expectations of a nation. Aspirations and dreams are shared and fostered during election campaigns for the electorates to exercise their preferences and those preferences become the goals of the government. The goals are then researched and refined into fine deliverables with the guarantees of the finest minds available locally and internationally. In my view, this is a sure path to the best of health, wellbeing, learning, and development outcomes of every young Victorian. I am happy that I got a little opportunity to participate in the creation of such a great path.
In summary, the experience from a brief period of internship with OPRI, DEECD was truly an enriching one.
