The Panel and the Provocation
I was seated on a stage at a university auditorium, invited to speak on a topic that I thought I had long since mastered—internships. As someone working at the intersection of education, policy, and workforce development, I’ve coordinated internships, mentored interns, and helped draft entire programs designed to onboard them. I had facts ready, a slide deck with carefully selected graphs, and the usual vocabulary of "competency frameworks," "skills alignment," and "youth employability" at the tip of my tongue. But what I found myself saying, almost instinctively, was something else entirely:
“We treat internships like dress rehearsals. But in a good rehearsal, you don’t just practice your lines—you question the script.”
That moment became the seed of this essay, which aims to explore internships not merely as transitional or transactional experiences, but as transformative ones—sites of epistemic unlearning, of cognitive dissonance, and of personal and organizational change. Using the internship program of my current workplace as an anchoring case, I argue that the most effective internships are not those that simply prepare students to conform to existing labor structures, but those that challenge them to rethink what knowledge, work, and contribution actually mean.
This piece blends academic theory, organizational case study, and creative nonfiction to map out a conceptual framework for what I call "the pedagogy of reversal"—a learning model where interns are not just passive absorbers of workplace norms, but active agents in questioning, reconfiguring, and co-creating meaning within mission-driven systems.The pedagogy of reversal proposes that effective education—particularly in the context of internships—must involve structured opportunities to reverse roles, disrupt assumptions, and challenge hierarchies. It is not a pedagogy of erasure, but of re-orientation. Interns are not merely novices who lack experience; they are epistemic agents capable of revealing blind spots, surfacing hidden assumptions, and generating alternative frameworks. In this sense, the intern becomes a catalyst—not just a recipient of training, but a source of organizational learning.The term “reversal” is inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, which insists on education as a practice of freedom, not domestication. For Freire, the "banking model" of education—where knowledge is deposited into passive students—reinforces systems of domination. Similarly, a one-way model of internship reproduces corporate or institutional hierarchies without questioning their ethical or epistemological foundations. The pedagogy of reversal, then, is a praxis of receptive disruption: it asks mentors and organizations to listen deeply to interns not just as future professionals, but as present-day interlocutors in a shared inquiry.
Internships, when situated in organizations that value reflective practice and purposeful disruption, can serve as rehearsal spaces for not just future employment but future citizenship—where young professionals learn to hold complexity, navigate ambiguity, and make decisions with moral weight. This is particularly urgent in mission-driven organizations like my current workplace, where data science interns (the audience during the panel discussion are date science students), for example, are not simply supporting projects but influencing how the organization understands its own impact.
What follows is a long-form inquiry into how internships can evolve into spaces of meaningful learning and institutional reflexivity. Drawing from educational theory, narrative reflection, and on-the-ground experiences within where I currently work, I propose that internships, when designed with intention and supported with structures that encourage both learning and unlearning, have the potential to catalyze deep shifts in both individual trajectories and organizational missions.
To argue this is to take seriously the idea that internships are not peripheral. They are pedagogical. They are epistemological. And they are political. And in a time where education and employment are increasingly interwoven with questions of justice, equity, and technological disruption, we would do well to pay attention to what our interns are learning, and what they are helping us unlearn.
Beyond Coffee Runs and Credentialism
To understand the potential of internships as vehicles for transformation, it is necessary to first critique their current state. The dominant narrative of internships has, for decades, rested on the twin assumptions of productivity and credentialism. Interns are often treated as either expendable labor—tasked with repetitive or menial work—or as aspirants whose primary value lies in accumulating experience to populate their CVs. This utilitarian framing reduces internships to checkpoints on a predetermined career ladder, rather than as spaces for authentic growth, exploration, and contribution.
But what if we understood internships differently? What if internships were not just rites of passage, but sites of co-construction—of knowledge, of skills, and of purpose? In mission-driven organizations, where the boundary between labor and learning is naturally porous, the internship becomes less about utility and more about discovery. Interns learn not only the tasks assigned to them but also the broader implications of those tasks—why the work matters, who it serves, and what values it reinforces.
This reimagining is not merely sentimental. It aligns with critical literature on experiential learning, including the work of John Dewey, who argued that education must be grounded in experience if it is to be meaningful. Internships, when implemented thoughtfully, become crucibles for experiential learning—not because they mimic the workplace, but because they reflect the complexities, contradictions, and collaborative dimensions of real-world problem-solving.
And yet, the current culture surrounding internships often privileges technical proficiency over critical reflection. In highly competitive labor markets, the pressure to perform—to prove one’s worth through productivity and polish—overshadows the messier, more human aspects of learning. We do not often ask interns what they struggled with, what they unlearned, or how their perspectives evolved. Instead, we measure their success by deliverables completed and checklists ticked.
This is where mission-driven organizations can offer a counter-narrative –– centering purpose over productivity, and reflection over routine, such organizations can provide interns with experiences that transcend the transactional. Here, interns are not merely preparing for jobs—they are engaging in a form of civic rehearsal. They are being invited to think critically about the world as it is and to imagine the world as it could be.
The implications of this shift are profound. When internships are treated as serious pedagogical spaces, they become transformative—not just for interns, but for the institutions that host them. Interns bring with them a set of questions, curiosities, and critiques that can challenge organizational assumptions and catalyze innovation. In this way, the relationship is reciprocal. Interns are not just learning from organizations; organizations are learning from interns.
Letting to to Learn Anew
The pedagogy of reversal is also a form of justice. It redistributes epistemic authority and affirms the capacity of young people—especially those from marginalized contexts—to think critically and systemically. In the Global South, where much of education and workforce development still follow post-colonial, hierarchical templates, embracing reversal is not just pedagogically sound—it is politically urgent.
Moreover, reversal operates not just at the level of the intern. Organizations must also unlearn. They must reverse assumptions about expertise, efficiency, and impact. They must become learners in their own right—willing to risk discomfort in the pursuit of greater relevance. This mutual reversal is the crucible of authentic transformation.
Unlearning, in the context of internships, is not about discarding knowledge arbitrarily—it is about questioning assumptions that no longer serve personal growth or organizational purpose. Interns often arrive with prior notions shaped by formal education: that success is linear, that answers are fixed, and that professionalism means compliance. But mission-driven work, especially in organizations navigating real-world complexity, challenges all of these premises.
In internship program, unlearning becomes a daily practice. Data science interns are not merely handed datasets and told to compute. They are immersed in conversations about equity, policy, and outcomes. They are encouraged to question how the data was collected, what assumptions are embedded in the algorithms, and what biases may emerge in predictive models. This process is inherently uncomfortable—because it calls into question not just what one knows, but how one knows it.
The theory behind this is well-grounded in educational psychology. Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning describes how disorienting dilemmas—moments that disrupt our habitual ways of thinking—can catalyze deep learning. Internships that support this kind of reflection help interns make meaning not through acquisition, but through reinterpretation. They move from certainty to curiosity, from expertise to inquiry.
The role of mentors, then, is not to correct or instruct, but to accompany. Often time, some of thee most insightful questions come not from experts, but from interns who are unencumbered by the status quo. This reciprocal dynamic reaffirms that unlearning is not just a personal task—it is institutional work. Organizations must be willing to listen, to pause, and to see themselves anew through the eyes of those just arriving.
One intern shared how she had to let go of her belief that technology alone could solve educational inequality. After working with a regional team conducting field interviews, she came to understand that digital tools must be embedded in social contexts, and that human relationships remain central to transformation. That insight did not emerge from reading a policy paper; it came from unlearning techno-solutionism through lived contradiction.
In a time when both education and employment are in flux—driven by AI, economic precarity, and shifting generational values—unlearning is not a luxury. It is survival. Interns who practice unlearning become more adaptable, more reflective, and more humane. Organizations that create space for this process become more agile, more relevant, and more just.
As I reflect on the panel discussion that began this essay, I am reminded that my own insight—“a good rehearsal questions the script”—was itself a reversal. I had planned to teach, but instead I remembered. I remembered that education at its best is not a performance of knowing, but a practice of re-knowing. That we do not prepare youth for the future by rehearsing the past—we do it by letting them help us rewrite it. To unlearn is to reverse, but not regress. It is to reorient—to clear space for deeper learning, and for a more authentic encounter with purpose. Internships that recognize this are not just helping interns grow; they are helping institutions evolve.
