"De söker nyutexaminerade socionomer med erfarenhet"

Sammanfattning: A qualitative study based on interviews completed with four students at Malmö University. The purpose of the study is to get an understanding of how the students connect the academic- and the practical part of the education during their internship. The purpose has also been to look at the consequences of the choice of internship and how it effects the students in their career preparation and their thoughts about the social work practice. The questions in the paper are weather the student experience that they get good a possibility to unite and expand their theoretical and practical knowledge during the internship semester, the students experience of what impact the internship has for their preparation towards the social work practice, and if the internship changed the expectations that the students have for their future work. The result has been analyzed using Bertha Reynold's Learning and Teaching in the Practice of Social Work and Kolb´s Learning Style Inventory and showed that students note the difficulty in seeing a connection between the academic and the practical part of the education during their internship. The internship is described as very important as does the supervisors who’s role it is to help support the students so they can process their experiences using Kolb´s learning theory and to advance to the different phases in Bertha Reynolds model. The extended internship period gives the students an opportunity to develop well. However, having only one whole semester of internship results in the students becoming limited in their choices when applying for post-graduation work. According to the students, employers look for newly graduated social workers with experience in the field. As such experience can mainly come from the internship semester the students become limited in their search for work. This results in the students realizing the weight and importance in choosing a place for their internship. The students all got a positive experience during their internship. They all got the feeling that their opportunities to act where bigger than they had imagined.