23. Journal Writing as Taking Ownership of Internship Experiences

Abstract

Many disciplines employ journal writing as a tool for students to record and reflect on their learning experiences. In the internship program in Communications Culture and Information Technology at the University of Toronto Mississauga students experience the transfer of classroom theory to practice in the “real” work world during a once a week placement. Students use journals to account for these experiences reflecting on the knowledge they gain from their observations and how this knowledge incorporates into everyday work life. However, journal writing has pedagogical affordances that extend beyond recording and reflecting on experience. Language mediates the learning as students choose what to say about what they experience. They take ownership of these connections and make meaning by appropriating these ideas as part of who they are and who they are becoming as industry professionals. Identifying the ways in which students use journal writing to construct their professional selves will contribute to the evolving scholarship of experiential education.