The Challenges of Doing an Internship in Iran; Connecting the Path to the Rhizome(Case Study: Training and Human Resource Development Field)

This article examines the challenges that interns face during the internship process in Iranian organizations. The internship is one of the university application programs to establish a relationship with society's service and economic sectors. Universities try to improve students' skills through these programs to prepare them for the workplace. A fundamentalist thought that an internship is not an opportunity to create knowledge but a tool to acquire specific tasks and skills. With a post-qualitative analysis and a post-structuralist approach, this article has identified the structures, mental patterns, and dominant discourses that have prevented internships. For this purpose, in the present research, 12 interns in the field of Training and Human Resource Development and 29 managers and employees of public and private organizations in Tehran were canvassed. The results showed that what is implemented in the internships varies from the official dimensions and drawn goals. A critical reflection shows that behind this dramatic image are hidden curricula that confront us with what happens in the internship process. We hope that knowing these mental patterns and dominant discourses will help the members of Iranian organizations and the interns in this field to free themselves from the control of such discourses to provide an opportunity for the interns to make the internship process not a linear and fundamentalist path but in a Rhizomatic approach for the construction of knowledge.